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The Level Up Creators podcast is for digital creators ready to take their business to the next level. You'll learn valuable strategies and hear engaging stories from industry pros and digital creators who have walked the path of scaling up.
Whether you're tired of tap dancing for the algorithm or seeking to build real wealth - without the burnout - this podcast offers proven methods and practical advice to help you elevate your business, on your terms. Join us!
Amanda (00:01.069)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators like you turn their personal brands into recurring revenue. And we're so glad you're here. Welcome. My guest today is a seasoned professional and former Silicon Valley executive turned digital creator who now runs a successful solo business that sells courses and training to product teams and executives at a few little companies you may or may not heard of like Mercedes -Benz, Tesla, Microsoft, and others like that.
He has masterfully turned a successful corporate career into a business that he fully controls and that fits the needs of his family right now. I can't wait to unpack Daniel's journey and hope that you listeners can see a path that you can take to monetize your experience and expertise outside of the corporate grind. Welcome Daniel.
Daniel Elizalde (00:46.702)
Thank you so much, Amanda, for that warm introduction. It's a pleasure being here.
Amanda (00:50.829)
That's a well -earned introduction. You have been in this game for a very long time and I'm so excited to talk about how you got here. And just to give everybody listening a little bit of background, so I've had the pleasure of getting to know Daniel over the last six months or so and seeing the nuts and bolts of his business and even gotten to advise Daniel on some very specific steps he can take to create things like automated evergreen sales funnels for his existing courses, expanding his social media presence in a way that will hopefully quickly increase lead flow.
And ultimately we're working toward building recurring revenue opportunities for Daniel since that is kind of the holy grail of any business, whether you're a giant corporation, a digital creator or a solopreneur. And on that note of talking about your well -earned bio, I do want to point out that Daniel didn't get here overnight and we're not big believers in overnight success stories here at Level Up Creators because in truth, they're fairy tales, right? What may appear as instant success to most of us is always the result of a great deal of intention, effort.
work and time. So we're going to demystify this process of moving from a very successful career in the corporate world to doing life and work on Daniel's and hopefully your own terms. So Daniel, before we get started, can you share a little bit more about yourself, your background and the catalyst for your move from corporate to creator?
Daniel Elizalde (02:07.534)
Of course. Well, my journey really started in Mexico City. So I'm born and raised in Mexico City. I studied engineering there and my first job was actually in Austin, Texas, working for a industrial automation company. And since then I've had a series of opportunities to work at corporates, large and small, in mostly engineering and product management types of roles, and always in kind of like heavy industry.
automation, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications. And so throughout my journey, I've seen the opportunity to work at executive roles, being head of product at a climate tech company in Silicon Valley, or being vice president head of IOT at Ericsson, a $40 billion company, as well as other smaller startups. And so throughout my journey, there's always been a constant of me wanting to produce what we call content now.
to organize my thoughts and then share it for the purpose of whatever goal I was in the corporate world, right? Usually training my teams or getting buy -in from executives. At some point in the journey, I started writing a blog and those ideas in the blog started to get me some visibility and I started to realize that, hey, some of my thoughts might have some traction, right? And it just...
Amanda (03:34.669)
you
Daniel Elizalde (03:34.798)
evolved from there. My blog took me to start actually teaching when I was living in Silicon Valley. I had the opportunity to start teaching at Stanford University Continuing Studies, where I trained thousands of senior leaders in Silicon Valley on technology for connected devices, IoT. And that was a time when I was working at a startup and I decided, you know what, I really like the teaching part. I've always been good at it. I always enjoyed it.
What if I do this full time? And so that's when my journey truly transitioning from corporate to creator happened. And then of course, when I had that leap, I already was teaching at Stanford, but I was kind of like, now what? And so it's been a journey of figuring out what is my business model, what works for me. And I started with online courses trying to learn how do you actually run a business as a creator?
which is very different than being an executive at a company. And my path has been interesting because it's all about optionality and flexibility. I did creator work for about three years doing consulting training. And then I had the opportunity to join Ericsson as vice president leading their venture studio in Silicon Valley. That's an amazing opportunity for me. With the pandemic, decided to leave Silicon Valley, move back to Austin and become a stay home dad to take care of my daughter.
Amanda (04:35.853)
Mm -hmm.
Daniel Elizalde (05:03.406)
And during that time is when I wrote my book and I come up with new material. And so I have the opportunity to, you know, so I come out of paternity leave with my daughter. Then we had our second kid and I come out of that. I always have my creator business ready for me to, to take it to the next level and don't feel like, Oh, I always have to be hunting for a job if I want to, I can, but I also have this business that I, that I built in a way that is sustainable for me. And I'm happy to.
to share more details about that.
Amanda (05:34.509)
Yeah, I definitely want to dig into that. One of the things that initially really, really drew me to you and you were connected to me through my mentor, Susan Sturm. Shout out to Susan. She's an amazing connector and human in general, but that you are a stay at home dad and that you are sort of utilizing your expertise, experience, knowledge, network and personal brand. You're leveraging that in the best possible way to educate other leaders who were
who are still in the corporate world and individuals, I'm sure, as well, taking your courses. But you've found the most unique points of leverage to you based on your unique knowledge and expertise and turn that into revenue for yourself that enabled you to live the lifestyle that you want, right? Stay at home, dad. This is a lot more than a side hustle at this point. You've done quite well as a creator. And so there's kind of a model here that I want to unpack.
so that other people in full -time jobs working for other people, making other people wealthy can think about how they can sort of extract what they have learned and their knowledge and experience over the years and use those as points of leverage for their own business. So, yeah, let's dig in a little bit further. So what year was it that you left the Silicon Valley? Erickson, what was your last corporate job? It was at Erickson, right?
Daniel Elizalde (06:57.934)
It wasn't Ericsson. It was 20, 2021, I believe. It was the middle of the pandemic. So 20, end of 2020, 2021. Yes.
Amanda (07:09.613)
Okay, so before that you were kind of in the creator world starting in like 2018. Okay.
Daniel Elizalde (07:15.054)
Yes, so 2017 is when I really started working full -time as a creator. And one interesting thing though, from the very beginning, I was very lucky to be surrounded by people that I admire as mentors in the product management world. And so I was able to understand how their business works. And the interesting thing is that my business is polar opposite to what most people in my profession do. So most of the folks in my path really,
our consultants and consultants first. And I came from it, uh, from the blogger side where we are more called creator now, which is content first that leads to an automated offering. Because I realized that I didn't want to be trading time for money early on. And so what can I do that can enable me to maximize every piece of content that I do and amplify that and drive it to actually generating revenue.
And so the interesting thing is that I set up through marketing animation, which I know you know and have helped me with some of that. I figure out or I approach my business as an automated business. And so when I was working as a creator for about three years and then I have the opportunity to work at Ericsson, part of my contract was that my creator business would continue running in the background. And so while I was working on Ericsson, making an executive,
Silicon Valley executive salary, my creative business was creating six figures in the background. And so that was amazing, right? And so when I was able to go into leave Ericsson and go back to being a full -time dad in this situation, my business was already creating and I was able to work part -time. And the time that I had, I would continue building the pieces so that the business could...
Amanda (08:48.333)
Mm -hmm.
Daniel Elizalde (09:10.318)
grow as self -sustained as possible. So that's always been my approach. I don't want to build an agency. It's like, it's me, it's my thoughts. How can I maximize that?
Amanda (09:22.125)
Yeah, I love that point of view for sure. Let's back up a couple of steps real quick. What was the tipping point for you to go from just educating your team internally to, I wonder if somebody else might be interested in this and then making that information public onto a blog.
Daniel Elizalde (09:37.806)
Yes. So the reason I started my blog, even years before that, I think it's like 2014, was kind of funny because I was at a company where the CEO just comes in one day, it was a services company and said, hey, we are opening an office in Seattle and we're looking for the general manager over there. And we found the guy. This is the guy. And it's like, what?
It's this guy that has this big following, has a presence, everybody knows him, everybody trusts him. This is the guy, right? And then when I started working with this person that the company hired, he was really good at his job, but not more than many of us. And I sat down with him and it's like, the only difference between you and I is that I've taken time to build my brand and that opens a lot of doors. And I was like, the thought for me was, I know that I'm really good at my job and my mom knows it, but nobody else knows it, right?
And so starting to write was about putting my thoughts and how can I get positioning and recognized for myself. And so I started doing that for a while. And then when we moved from Austin to Silicon Valley and I started, I was head of products at a climate tech startup, scale up. And I started figuring out how I can solve some problems that the company had for my teams. I created this framework and to test it out, like everything in product.
I put it out in my blog. I started doing keynotes outside the company and I got a lot of feedback. And I just heard that the concept really, really resonated with everybody. In fact, one of the tipping points for me was living in the Bay Area. My wife, Stanford alum, she said, why don't you take this to Stanford and see if they're interested in you teaching? And I was like, why not? I talked to them. They interviewed me. They went through the whole process.
I opened my blog and I said, I can talk about this. Nobody's talking about this. I have a framework. I have a method. I have validated it. And they said, yeah, that's a hot topic. Let's do it. But for us to let you teach, we're going to open registration. And then within two months, if you don't get 15 students, we cancel the course. And I was like, that's fair. They open registration.
Daniel Elizalde (11:58.606)
And I get a call that night and the head of admissions said, hey, Daniel, you have a hundred people registered in your course. Like, what do we do? And I'm like, and so I taught this a hundred people course. And then I started teaching a hundred, 200 people classes every quarter. And, you know, per what Stanford said, that was the most successful course in Stanford's continuous study history. You know, that's what they told me at the time.
And so I knew I had something because all the people that were coming to my classes are from companies I admired or I looked up, you know, it's GE, it's ABB, it's, you know, Siemens, it's Ford, it's Mercedes. And they all were like, we're trying to figure this out and maybe you can help us with this. And so that's where I knew I had something interesting. And then I just said, well, maybe I can stop teaching it all the time and make it an online course. And that's how I transitioned to that part. So it's just been a little by little.
Journey optimizing, right?
Amanda (12:57.229)
Yes, okay, so cool. All right, and so did you build your course over a semester or however long your course was offered for or did you go into the semester quarter like with everything built out? How did you organize and flesh out your content to where it was ready to deliver in class?
Daniel Elizalde (13:18.638)
So that's a great question. I had my framework and because I'm a very linear thinker and a structured thinker, so I had my framework that has all these different steps. And so I said, the course is gonna be seven weeks, eight weeks. Each week is one of the modules of my framework and off we go. So I put together the skeleton of it and then I started teaching it and every week I would get fine tune. And so by the end of the first,
time I taught it, the first eight weeks, I had really good validation of what worked, what didn't. And I had all the material. And then after that, every quarter that I would teach it, I was pretty much teaching back to back, sometimes two cohorts at the same time. I was able to fine tune a lot of that. So, and because I was interacting directly with the students, I could get a lot of feedback of like, this is good, this is not good, we like this. And so by the time I decided to record it,
I had pretty much proven that the course worked. Now, teaching a live in class course versus a recorded one is quite different, I learned. So there was a transition there, right?
Amanda (14:31.597)
Yeah, that is a really good point though, where you're kind of testing with live fire here. And I mean, I live in a town with a university, there's universities everywhere. And of course, like you've got Stanford, MIT and Harvard have like the most enviable extension programs, right? If you can get a teaching seat in there, that's gold. But I live in Fort Collins, Colorado and I could go teach a class at Colorado State University and get kind of that same level of engagement and interaction and feedback.
to sort of refine and hone an offering and also kind of get used to teaching in front of people, speaking in front of people and things like that. So I think that's kind of, it's not super low hanging fruit, but it is attainable, that is achievable for many, many experts, especially, this is reminding me a lot of another one of our clients, Aaron Francis. And he started working in public, basically. I mean, he's a developer educator.
And he teaches all sorts of different frameworks and MySQL and like databases is kind of his niche. And he developed a strong personal brand, I think starting on Twitter, because he was just saying everything that he was doing, what's working, what's not working. I'm doing this experiments that had not led to building courses and products and consulting and job opportunities and the next opportunity, the next opportunity. Now he has a significant following and is getting brand deals and has actually now gone out on his own and started his own agency to.
teach other corporations how to grow through YouTube with excellent video content. And so like kind of a similar trajectory, but I'm seeing the similarities here in the personal brand are like, I think I'm onto something and you have to realize that I think we have this strange internal bias. I don't know what the psychological term for it is, but I'm sure there is one where we think that because we know something, everybody else must know this, right? Like this is basic information and knowledge, but no, oh my gosh, no, it is not. We all have our own.
unique experience and bias and like way of seeing the world and people on you as whoever's listening you undoubtedly have something to offer to other people that they do not know because they do not have your lived felt you know educated experience and so one sort of like overcoming that mental hurdle and then the next mental hurdle I think is oh this feels really vulnerable to put this information out into the world.
Amanda (16:48.077)
but kind of just saying like, okay, I'm gonna just walk straight into that and just do it and success is on the other side. I know I'm gonna open up opportunities if I start making things public. And then the next step is a framework. So I love that you brought that up, Daniel. And that makes me think of Simon Sinek. I mean, he has one of the most iconic personal brands of like modern influencers, right? I would totally consider him a digital creator as well. And his framework, it is...
dead simple. I mean, I can't remember exactly what is part of it, but it's a triangle with a circle in the middle and it's about like leadership and knowing your why. It's very, very simple, right? Going back to purpose and fulfillment and things like that. But it's the working in public coupled with a framework and a strong POV point of view around that framework. And then that kind of seems like if you have those things together working in concert, that's when the doors really start to open to you and people start knocking on
your door as opposed to you having to knock on theirs all the time. Is that fair assessment?
Daniel Elizalde (17:49.998)
Yeah, I think I completely agree with that because I think that each one of us has our own expertise. And I know that I have my expertise and my niche and my focus has always been on industrial types of applications. And I know that the depth of knowledge that I have there makes me really unique. But what I've been learning through this journey is that it's really difficult to consume this level of complexity. And so what I would think is my superpower is
to be able to connect the dots and simplify a lot of this complex information into a simple framework that can then be easily understood and easily applied. And I think the development of a framework, it's also a journey because I just thought about this anecdote when I was starting to build this framework, my first framework, the one I was teaching at Stanford is called the IoT Decision Framework. So I had all this complex.
areas that you need to think about from a strategy perspective of building these connected products. Mind you, the connected products that I work on are wind turbines and power plants. And it's like the telecommunication rigs. It's like kind of heavy duty stuff. So it can get a little bit heavy. And so I started working in public and the way I did it by the time, because I was connected with my profession and I was a frequent speaker in meetups.
I just didn't have to. I mean, I've done like big stage speaking, but like at this stage, it was great to be able to go to a meetup and speak in front of 20 people. And so I was able to present, hey, here's my framework to these 20 people. And it was of course version one. And I remember a friend that I trust that's a really recognizable figure in my space. He came to me and was like, Daniel, I like your presentation. Your framework sucks, but you're onto something, right? And so I...
You know, fast forward three, four iterations is the framework that I have today. And when I started teaching that at Stanford, the reaction that I got from people was like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. And oftentimes the value is in connecting the dots. A lot of the people that I was training are like senior executives that they know a lot more than me, but it's like, I've never thought about it like this, or I've never seen the pieces together. Or now I have language that I can share internally with my teams to get everybody aligned.
Daniel Elizalde (20:12.11)
And that is extremely valuable.
Amanda (20:14.285)
Oh, that's so interesting. And that's such, that's another great tip, like hosting meetups or joining meetups and working in iterations, right? So you don't work in the dark without any feedback, make a course and then expect people to buy it. But you had a very iterative process and I think you were following your own process of what you're teaching to develop products as you were developing your own products, which, you know, now is courses and very well organized training.
Daniel Elizalde (20:42.382)
Right. Yeah, it's kind of funny, right? Because I follow my own process. And in fact, when I wrote my book, the book is a six step process to building, going from idea to early customer. And I actually wrote the book using that framework. And I built my new courses using that framework. And just how it is. And the interesting thing, though, I think COVID really changed things for creators because it made video conferencing and Zoom
Amanda (20:43.437)
Is that fair? Did you end up, is that sort of meta?
Daniel Elizalde (21:11.918)
ubiquitous. And so before you have to figure out who has a spot for me to go into a meetup in my town, right? But now you can host your own. And even if you have three people attending, if the goal is to test these ideas, even better. But you can talk to a lot of different people and you can say, I'm going to be in a podcast or in a live webinar for a group of product managers in Australia.
or in New Zealand or in whole Europe or in Latin America, I'm testing my ideas. And it's very easy, right? In my office here at my home, I travel the world every day because all these people can see my content and give me feedback. So it's really, really fast. And to be honest, there is no excuse today to not get that early feedback and fine tune with your customers because ultimately you're helping them solve problems. And if you're not delivering,
that solution, they're the only ones that can tell you, right? So the more you put the time and understanding their pains and present your potential solution to them, you can't expect to just to go in a cave, come up with a course and why doesn't it sell? Why?
Amanda (22:26.701)
Yeah, those are really, really good points for, I mean, just coming up with that initial product offering. The marketing is like a whole different piece, which I hope we have time to tackle here, but really quickly, what was the process of quitting your job like emotionally and, you know, with your wife? I mean, this was, I'm sure was a joint decision, very intentional for the lifestyle that you're going for, but that probably felt scary and like you're stepping into the unknown in some point. So can you kind of...
Help us understand what that was like and what made you feel safe enough to go for it.
Daniel Elizalde (23:00.654)
Yes, that's a great question. And I think it's a very important thing to consider when you're a creator thinking of going full time. When I decided to leave the scale that I was working at, I already was teaching at Stanford and had a few leads on doing some corporate workshops. So I had a little bit of a pipeline. Sometimes it's just not enough, right? But I had that going. And it was a discussion with my wife. And in our house, I'm stealing this from...
from my mentor, Rich Murinoff, which is only one startup at a time. Years back when my wife finished her MBA, she decided to be an entrepreneur and put on a business. And at that time I had the corporate job, the insurance, all those things to make sure that our family plans wouldn't be affected. There's a built upside. And that didn't work out. And so she decided to close down that business and then work to work at a corporate job. When I went on my own,
Now she had the corporate job and we had the insurance and everything. So that's how we balanced it. Right. Then I went, then she changed jobs and now she's, you know, leadership role in tech. And then I went to Ericsson as an executive in tech. So that was sweet. But then when I decided to leave Ericsson, we had this very stable situation at home because she had a very.
good job still does at a top tech company that provides not only the financial stability, but the mental stability, health insurance, all that. So it allows me to explore and run a startup. So that's how we did it. So it's difficult emotionally because you're going from having teams,
uh, you know, having an executive salary, the recognition, right? I remember when I left my job at Ericsson and I went to my first, um, trade show to, to see who wants training. I texted my wife. It's like, I forgot how invisible you are when you don't have the big company logo on your tag. Right? It's like before people will chase me in the halls. It's like, you know, an executive of Ericsson, he can you, you know, interested in funding. Can you buy it?
Daniel Elizalde (25:27.054)
Here, people wouldn't even say hi to me. And so that is really big in your ego. And it's like, wait, am I? But then when you start getting some traction and see that people value what you do because of what you do, it's very rewarding. Because I don't need a brand behind me to deliver value. So it's like, I deliver value because of what's in my head and what I can help my students.
Amanda (25:30.669)
Hmm.
Amanda (25:51.149)
Oh, that's calling up all sorts of feelings in me about like one identity and how we equate our identity and our worth with our work and how much money we make and like having the corporate logo on the name tag, whether it's in your Zoom background or on your name tag at a conference or whatever the case may be. And I love in the creator economy, like the decoupling of those things in some way where you get to be you and kind of live life on your own terms. And yes, it is a huge step in faith and it is a step in...
betting on yourself and believing in yourself. But just the self -actualization, I think is probably the right term that can come from going out on your own and saying, I can do this. And I don't need the logo to be myself and to add value. Like I am separate and distinct from that. And so I hope that the creator economy is a place where people feel like they can show up and be themselves. So it was interesting that you said that. I hadn't really thought about that in those terms before. So thank you.
Daniel Elizalde (26:48.91)
Yeah, and I think it's also important to understand that in my case, my customers are people in technology. So I understand not all creators are in this space, of course. But one of the big things is that when you become a full -time creator, there is your area of expertise where you create content and add value. But that's just one piece. You have to learn how to run a business. And...
Amanda (27:14.701)
Mm.
Daniel Elizalde (27:15.566)
You know, I'm part of your membership program and you have some amazing courses there in terms of how to go from like creator to CEO. Right. And so this idea of me, I am actually running a business and you have to deal with the sales and the marketing and the development and the taxes. And I think that that makes me a much more rounded executive that I could ever have been working at a big company because you've lived it right. And you know that.
Like if my courses don't sell, I don't make any money today and that sucks. Right. So I think it's very empowering to, it's very empowering, but it's also a cautionary tale that if you do this full time, you're going to have to run a business. Right. And I think a lot of people that I talk to get too hung up on the creating content. That's just one part. You're really running a business, right. And understanding the mechanics. And I have to say your support and your membership program has been.
really, really insightful into how do you run an overarching business. And so I think that for everybody listening here that is thinking about creators and creator space, the program that you provide is extremely valuable. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to do trial and error for the next five years. Just get that help and get that understanding.
Amanda (28:35.725)
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of like our mission with Level Up Creator School. Like we've had the consulting firm Level Up Creators for a while now, and that does awesome one -to -one white glove work, but it is expensive. Like we believe in value -based pricing, just the way that I teach you to use value -based pricing in pricing your products and services as a creator. But we wanted to do a one -to -many offer because we realized that, you know, the consulting firm, like not everyone can afford that. That's cost prohibitive for the vast majority of the population and for the...
people that we wanna serve, honestly. And so, yeah, we're doing our best at Level Up Creator School and we're definitely testing everything that we do before we teach it to folks like you, Daniel, but thank you for saying that. We are enjoying the ride for sure and really just getting started with that. But yeah, the whole point of what we're doing here is to help you as a creator find your area of expertise and knowledge and passion. Well, really, I think as a three circle Venn diagram, so in one circle you have your...
passion and the other you have your expertise and the third circle is what people will pay for. And like your creator business lies right in the center of that three circle Venn diagram, which is one of our frameworks, going back to that. And then we want to marry the center of that three circle Venn diagram with level of creators business skills and help you actually put all the pieces together to like create the automated funnels like Daniel's talking about here.
and make sales on autopilot and repeat. And again, like our goal is to help you achieve recurring revenue, because that's really, really the ultimate business goal in terms of how to make money. And there are more frameworks involved in how to get there, but let's go back to your, or go ahead actually, and then I wanna ask more questions.
Daniel Elizalde (30:16.462)
Yeah. I was going to say that if I were to give a piece of advice for creators thinking about going full time, I think it's very important to understand how the business of creators work. There's not just one model, there's multiple models, but sometimes there's a lot of people that are always interested in what I do and I am happy to sit down with them and share my journey. But one of the big questions is, so how do you go from writing a blog post,
Amanda (30:30.285)
Mm.
Daniel Elizalde (30:45.55)
to making a living, right? And so understanding how the creator business models work, how does it go from that to the funnels, to what you sell and the product ladders that we've been talking about, I think that is so, so, so important and that gets lost. I talked to some creators that I admire that have a huge following, but they don't know what to do with that following. They don't know how to monetize it. They, so,
Amanda (30:47.693)
Yeah.
Daniel Elizalde (31:13.07)
I think that's huge and we're all learning over it's a process, right? But I think that understanding the business you're going to be in, the business of being a creator is key, right? Because you're running a business. If otherwise just a hobby and you might as well just write your blog on the side, which I do as well.
Amanda (31:29.933)
That is such a really, really great point because, and that's exactly where I was gonna steer our conversation because you didn't go from even the blog posts, the Stanford course and the meetups and the keynote talks and everything like that. There's still a lot of steps and technical requirements and a growth mindset. That's exactly what you were kind of speaking to earlier. That's an absolute requirement if you're gonna run a creator or a solo business for sure. But it does, it is so empowering to learn.
how to do those things and understand the technical aspects of that, even if that is the complete like antithesis of what your area of knowledge and expertise and passion is, we try and simplify that for you and make it as easy as possible, but let's talk about that. So we talked about your background and blog and having a personal brand and how you're able to leverage that. You refine what ultimately became your first course through your work at.
Stanford extension service, meetups, talks, getting direct feedback from people that you respect. Now you've got a course, right? And so at that point, I know LinkedIn is your primary and actually only social media platform that you use. I love the focus and the concentration there. How was your sort of like engagement on LinkedIn and follower count? Were you like promoting your blog on LinkedIn at that point?
Daniel Elizalde (32:47.918)
Yes, I was promoting it. At the time, I was both on LinkedIn and Twitter. With all the changes of Twitter, and it's not even Twitter anymore, I decided to just focus on LinkedIn. And so, yeah, that has been one of my main focuses. Now, and this is why I, again, particularly like your holistic view of things. Because I've always been a student of the craft. So I've taken a lot of course, I've taken a lot of...
Amanda (32:57.069)
Right.
Daniel Elizalde (33:17.582)
joint programs, et cetera. And so from each program, you learn a little bit. And one of my early inroads into creator economy and world was through SEO. And then, so you have blogs and through search engine optimization, you bring traffic to your site. That traffic subscribes to your email list and off it goes into your funds, which we can talk more about.
So for a while, my whole focus was creating content, fine tuning for SEO, growing my traffic, and then a small percentage of that traffic might or might not convert. But then my model has evolved, right? And which is now I don't believe I need that much volume, but I have to be a little bit more engaged. And then the people that I engage directly have a way of converting them.
out of whatever platform, which I know is something you really talk about, right? That's just a rented space and you can't really sell that much there. And you can't just pitch them something. And especially my courses are in the thousand dollar ranges. They're not just gonna buy it out of seeing a post on LinkedIn, right? This is the nurturing aspect, even if it's automated. And so now my lot of my focus is how do I get more exposure with the right audience on LinkedIn? And how do I capture them into my email service?
so that I can nurture them and eventually they might buy. But you can see how it's not immediate, right? So you have to be working on this. It is a volume game, but not just brute force volume. Does that answer the question? Does that go in the right direction?
Amanda (34:58.093)
Yeah, that is such a great point. When did you start building an email list? At what point in this journey?
Daniel Elizalde (35:04.558)
Very early on when I built my blog, I heard that you need to create an email list. So I put a subscribe to my newsletter on my blog and I didn't look at it. So that this was 2015. Then when I learned, okay, so what do you do with an email list later? I realized that I had 12 subscribers and I was like, okay, let's do that, right?
And so I've been building it for a while, but now lately, I've been lately the last four or five years, being a lot more aggressive into the type of people that I went in, their journey throughout my email sequences, segmentation, surveys to understand. And one of the amazing things that I have seen from my list is that there's a lot of senior leaders and executives in my list.
which is very flattering that those folks actually read my stuff, right? In fact, you know, we met Susan, you mentioned her before, she was in my podcast, she was recommended by somebody to be in my podcast. And then we met, we kept in touch, and now she's taken some of my courses, all of my courses, actually, and then introduced us, right? But it's this journey of like the right people in my list, nurtured, hopefully, the right way and into...
hopefully closing a sale. And I do want to emphasize this because it's not all roses. I've messed up my branding and my email sequences so many times that I've lost a lot of people or that my engagement goes super, super low or that my attraction on top of funnel goes to zero and you have to rebuild again. But it's a constant, constant effort. And the people that likes...
Amanda (36:36.845)
Right.
Daniel Elizalde (36:59.47)
your own perspective, they want to hear more from you and they will tolerate your journey if you're providing value, right?
Amanda (37:07.021)
Yes, that's absolutely true. I mean, people like your content. They tend to be forgiving. They're going to be the outliers and the vocal minority like in every social scene possible on planet Earth. But you want to play to the majority there who are going to be kind, forgiving, reasonable human beings. OK, so let's get into this. You mentioned your podcast. And so, wow, I mean, you were really, really early on to things having an email list back in 2014, 2015. So that's incredible. And also at the beginning of
our chat today, you mentioned the importance of retaining optionality. And so I don't even know if you knew that you were doing that back in 2014, 2015 by starting an email list, but I love that. I love mental models and that's one of my favorites. This is just having, leaving doors open for yourself, right? And so you have options down the road. So even though you didn't have an amazing, massive email list straight out of the gate, you open the doors and that led to...
open doors later. So, okay, you got podcasts. That's a great top of funnel source. You're interviewing industry leaders in that. I assume people from your list as well were eager to jump on and be a guest. You've also since written a book and you also have a lead magnet. So I think podcast, lead magnet, LinkedIn, your blog. I mean, we talked about SEO a little bit. So you've got some like top of funnel sources. You are discoverable, right?
And you are also on other people's, you're on my podcast right now, but you're on industry specific podcasts as well to elevate your thought leadership, maybe still some speaking engagements. Yeah. Okay, and you use ConvertKit, right? Awesome. Okay, great, we love ConvertKit. Yeah. All right, so you have ways for people to find you. You are discoverable, you are a well -known personal brand, you are an authority figure, and you have the information on your personal website.
Daniel Elizalde (38:44.974)
Yes. Yes.
I do, I do, I do. I got a lot of homework to do.
Amanda (39:02.925)
communicates that very, very clearly like, whoa, Daniel is the guy for product leadership and innovation in B2B and IoT space. It's very, very clear. Okay, but you can't, yeah, you can't go from someone hearing this podcast or one episode of your podcast or one blog post or 12 LinkedIn posts to buying the thousand dollar course, right? So you've got the book as a proof point and you've got the lead magnet as a proof point. And then how do they get from,
Daniel Elizalde (39:12.366)
Yay!
Amanda (39:31.469)
book or lead magnet to buying that thousand dollar course.
Daniel Elizalde (39:35.534)
Yes, so what I do is I have, let me take a mini step back, right? So once I understood somewhat how this whole model works, then you start putting those hooks so that every piece of content that you create is intentional. And so for example, when I decided to write a book, I've always wanted to write a book. I like writing, I think I'm good at it. And so when I started writing my book,
people would tell me, it's like, hey, but you're not gonna make any money from your book. And I'm like, if you look at the numbers, right, I get like $3 for every book that's sold. In fact, now I have them showing over there, which is kind of cool. But that's not the goal. First of all, it's recognition. But second, in the book, once they get going in the book, they can download a workbook. And so that download a workbook is a lead magnet embedded in my book.
that takes them to one of my funnels. The podcast has an ad that takes them to a different lead magnet that goes into the funnels. When I do talks, there's always like a, hey, get a free chapter of my book that takes them to another funnel. So I think that you have to be very intentional with everything you do. And I'm learning and I'm fine tuning. But assuming that you get somebody in your list, then I start going through a series of automated sequences that...
share a lot of the content that I already have. So it's like today, hey, thank you for being here. This is what you're going to get from me. Here's one of my favorite articles on this topic. Two days later, here's another, here's a podcast episode. Here's this, here's this. So you're taking them through this journey. And after a certain warmup period, there is a sales sequence. So at that point, it just goes directly to a five, six email sequence that says,
Okay, here's my course and I use things like deadline funnel. And so it's like, you get a 20 % discount if you buy by Friday and it's all automated and each one gets their own timer. And then some people buy some others not, right? And so I have to some extent the metrics for everything, like how many people in the top of the funnel I need.
Daniel Elizalde (41:57.646)
in order to go through this sequence, in order to convert at this level, to convert at this level so that I can make a buck. And now that I have two courses related but not the same, I'm starting to do segmentation. So when you come into my newsletter, for example, you can do, are you interested in Internet of Things or are you interested in enterprise software? Okay, then you get some common knowledge and then if you're IoT, I'm gonna pitch you the IoT course, so I'm gonna take you through this route. If you are enterprise software,
I'm going to take you to the other route. And then the IoT person can also use the other course. So once they're done with this, more nurture, put them in the other one. So this is whole web of things, all through ConverkIt, all automated so that it all works in the back.
Amanda (42:42.445)
Yes, I love that you just explained the technical aspects of that. Sorry, go ahead with what you're about to say.
Daniel Elizalde (42:47.566)
I was going to say we forgot webinars because you and I have been talking about webinars and that has been a really interesting addition to top -of -funnel and libmagnet at the same time. But anyway, please continue.
Amanda (42:57.869)
That's where I was going with what you're doing on LinkedIn and webinars. So, okay, so I mean, we're big on demystifying like how you actually get from product to sale and what the backend of that, because the technical hurdle is often the biggest for creators, honestly. That's what we hear day in and day out. How do I put all the pieces together? I could never do that right with the tech. Now, again, just like you didn't get to the place to having this amazing personal brand overnight, you didn't get to having these complex automations working in the background 24 seven, 365.
You did not have a level of sophistication and segmentation and various lead magnets and various landing pages that lead to different products. Like this has been an evolution over years, right? Several years. And so I hope anyone who's listening, who's thinking about kind of like following this path, don't think that you have to do it all at once. I mean, this is working in iterations is one of actually like our company values, if you can believe that, but you don't bite off more than you can chew. You do.
low risk things that will yield medium to high results. You do the one thing, you assess your results, and then you make the next right decision with the information that you have. And you run it, you do that over and over and over, and that's how you run your business forever. And so don't be overwhelmed. Like it's one step at a time. You know, if nothing else, like start a newsletter, can, you know, create a free account on ConvertKit. We actually have an own your audience challenge that is a lead magnet that you can grab from us. We'll put it down here in the show notes.
or the description depending on where you're watching or listening. And it walks you through the process of setting up an account on ConvertKit, coming up with a compelling hook for a newsletter, creating a landing page for people to sign up for your newsletter, and then how to actually technically go through the steps of creating and deploying a newsletter on ConvertKit and how to come up with infinite ideas for your newsletter. And that's the starting point, really. And that gives you unbelievable optionality retention, if you will, for what you want to do later. But even if you're on the fence, you're not sure.
or you're starting to develop a personal brand, just turn the email list on and start your newsletter. Even if you put, you know, the first 400 words of your bi -weekly blog post into your newsletter and then just point to a blog post, like that's completely valid. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Daniel Elizalde (45:07.662)
Yeah, that's how I started. That's how I started. And before I had the recording courses, my weekly newsletter was, hey, I'm going to be teaching another course at Stanford, or I'm going to be teaching a public course here. So it's like, that's all that I had at the time. And so this sounds sophisticated because it's years in the making.
But now that I have my model and because I am a tech background, the tech is not difficult for me. In fact, like you laugh if I show you my whiteboard, I have a state machine and I've implemented a state machine in ConvergKate. And so, because that's what I do, right? But the important thing is like once you have the mental model of how things are gonna flow, okay, don't forget that that's just the tech, but like the speaking to your audience at each of those points and that's what you are really evaluating.
Are they responding to the message? Are they clicking the next thing? That's really, doesn't matter the complexity of where you take them. So even if it's like a simple linear two, three emails, are they engaging? Are your open rates high? Are your click rates high? Are your conversion rates high? And you might not even know what high means for you, but in time you will figure out what that means for you. And then you have some baselines and then you start from there. So I think that from my perspective, from a creator's,
job, I would say a third of my time is focused on ConvergeKit, on fine tuning these things, writing new engaging sequences. Because really once you capture somebody in your email list, how can I provide more value to them? So fine tuning these things. I created a new lead magnet. How can I offer them to my subscribers first? All these things. And to me, it's fun. It's great. I love writing and I love engaging with my audience. So...
It's great. And the cool thing, you do it once and then you let it roll. And then you have after a while, 10, 100 ,000 people go through that same and you can say, well, it's working. It's not working. Right.
Amanda (47:14.445)
Right, and people are telling you, whether they're telling you or not, by their actions or inaction, are they opening your email, just as Daniel's saying, are they clicking through? Those are all data points, those are quantitative, measurable, exact things that you can measure, and then of course, people replying to you, asking questions and engaging, that's qualitative feedback and that's subjective. Both of those are very, very important pieces of the puzzle to make good decisions. Okay, let's talk about...
kind of what you're doing on LinkedIn and webinars. I don't know if you wanna quickly unpack kind of your second course launch and the approach that you took to that and how that's sort of like, you're parlaying that into how you're approaching LinkedIn at this point. Whatever you wanna share would be great.
Daniel Elizalde (47:53.23)
Yeah, of course. So for my second course, it's a course based on my book. So the book is kind of like a hook. And then what you really monetize is the course. And so I wanted to build it in a similar way as testing things. And so I started with a live version of the course. Instead of going in and recording it, I started to say, OK, I think this piece could be a mini course.
Who can I offer this course to? I'm an advisor at a few climate tech accelerators. And I say, hey, I think your startups could benefit from this. Can I give you an hour workshop? And for me, I was testing whether that material worked. And at some point that I have tested several of the pieces, I said, I am doing a paid workshop during two half days on Zoom. And I'm going to teach it live. And I was really testing the whole material. And that's Susan attended that one.
The feedback was really, really good. They liked the material and I recorded it. And so then my next step, instead of spending the time polishing all the videos, why don't I just cut the videos and assemble an online course and sell that, see if that's something that people would like. And to do that, that's the stage that I'm in right now. I said, okay, how can I attract more people to test that funnel and sell that course? And that's where webinars came into play. I've never.
I've done a ton of webinars for other people, but not for my own products. And so it was a really nice experience to see how can I use a webinar? How does it really work, the technology, the mechanics? And then I were testing multiple things. One is, does the message and the topic resonate? And the webinar I promoted for two weeks, and I got 450 people enrolled.
So it was really, really good numbers for me, right? And so that told me the message resonates. People are interested. I taught the webinar. People really liked it. Then it went through my specific sales sequence. My open numbers were through the roof. My click numbers were not that good. My sales good numbers were not that good, right? And so...
Daniel Elizalde (50:12.846)
That has been a really interesting journey of like, OK, I know the message resonates. I know the people that take the course love it. But there's something with my email sequences that is not fully resonating and with the course itself. So I did surveys to try to understand why people didn't buy. I got a lot of good info. I changed other things, launched a promotion. And some of the benefits of that is now that I have that prototype course,
I started to test new messaging to sell that course, but I also was able to engage with a company that might distribute this online course because they know me and they saw that I already have a course, even though it's recorded in a beta stage. So now I have a major corporate buyer for this. So all these tests are leading me to, OK, well, it will be the path for this new course. So it's been.
Little by little by little in between diapers and in between sick days of my kids. But that's a good thing. It's like when I did the actual launch of the course, I showed up for a one hour webinar. And after I did the one hour webinar, I went in to change diapers. Everything was flowing through my sequences, the sales, the promotion, the pitch, the discounts, the buy, the delivery of the course. And I was just checking my numbers, making sure the bottle is warm.
Amanda (51:14.093)
That's right.
Daniel Elizalde (51:39.118)
And so that's kind of the beauty that I found with something like ConverKit and the marketing automation that you do this work and then you can take a step back and be with your family or other things. And this thing works for you in the background. And the more polished it is, the more money it makes. And then I can focus on, OK, it's fine tuned. Now I can push the accelerator at the top of the funnel because I know the rest will actually convert.
Amanda (51:54.221)
Yep.
Daniel Elizalde (52:08.814)
Until then, you need to fine tune the funnel. So anyway, long answer, but I hope that was helpful.
Amanda (52:09.069)
Yes.
Amanda (52:15.085)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I love like peeling back the curtain here on what's actually going on behind the scenes. That's just, I hope people find it interesting. And like you said, you need to know that going in, like you're running a business, but there are ways with technology, purpose -built tools that make this so much simpler and your reach can be infinite. I mean, truly you can reach 10 people or a hundred thousand people at the same time with the same technology. So that's pretty cool. We are about out of time here. And so,
I just want to ask one more question and then you can add anything else if you want at the end. But what advice would you give to someone who is in a career right now and maybe they have started a little bit of like personal branding and work, what we're calling working in public. Um, but they're on the fence about maybe not even like jumping ship at their corporate job, but maybe even just like creating a lead magnet or starting a newsletter. Um, what advice would you give to someone who's thinking, thinking about that?
Daniel Elizalde (53:13.902)
Yeah, that's good thinking. So a few things. I think that the first thing is that it's important to understand that it's a business. And so it's important that even if you just want to create a lead magnet, have an idea of where that is going to lead so that eventually you can think about how you could potentially monetize that.
That's the first advice. And the second advice I give is just do it. I talk to people that say, I have all these ideas and I'm going to do it. And I have this 300 half articles ready to go, but they never publish anything. They never, you won't really know until you publish your first thing, until you ask somebody to join your newsletter. And then you have to figure out what to send them next. Like you won't know. So just, just start and just start very, very small, but do it.
And you can see if you like it, if you get some traction. Because I love the creator model and the lifestyle. And I've been at it several times about the type of things that I talk about and the type of work that I do. But I spend the time understanding the business. So you might not like it. But if you like the model and you are excited about the tools and sharing that information, then just get started. It's OK if you don't know exactly what topic or exactly what framework.
That will come later. Just one step at a time, one step at a time. Getting started these days is so easy and so cheap. It's more about just doing it. But get the good mentorship and understanding of the whole business. Because otherwise, you might be able to say, oh, I have a good blog with a few people that read it. Now what? From the beginning, understand how to run this type of business.
Amanda (55:02.893)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you have to understand how to put all the pieces together. But I love the attitude of just start. I talk about like success being on the other side of fear and action and just acting, you know, doing it scared, right? Is a very common phrase. So I feel like that's exactly right. Yeah. Fail, fail fast, fail often and you will land upon something, but just kind of getting over that fear that, oh, what are people are going to think about me or yeah, what if I don't do well or what if people don't buy the thing? Don't set up something to buy right away. Just...
Daniel Elizalde (55:14.286)
Yeah, yeah, and you're gonna fail more often than not, so.
Amanda (55:32.301)
Start the email list. It starts with working in public and starting to own your audience rather than renting it. So grab our own your audience challenge below. We also have a bunch of free resources in the show notes and description here for you to get. But I mean, that's what kind of level up creator school is all about is to help you take your area of passion and expertise, find what people will pay for and marry it with the business skills and all of the technical, detailed technical steps that it takes. So.
Daniel, this is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing so much and being vulnerable. I think you're just an amazing human and creator and are going really, really amazing places very quickly. So how can people find you and is there anything else you'd like to leave us with?
Daniel Elizalde (56:12.814)
Thank you, Amanda. It's been a great conversation. I really appreciate your time and your support. It's been really great working with you. So for me, you can reach me at my website, danielelizalde .com. And if you are in tech and innovation, then my book, The B2B Innovators Map, that's where it all starts. And you can now actually look at that book with the eyes of it's a lid magnet, and you can follow the rabbit hole to see how it all works, right? So.
Anyway, I'm happy to connect and best of luck everybody in their creator journey.
Amanda (56:48.717)
Thank you. Time is precious. Thank you for sharing yours with us at Level Up Creators. We turn your expertise and experience into recurring revenue with services like membership communities, high ticket, small group coaching programs, and more. We help creators like Daniel at levelupcreatorschool .com where our team becomes your full stack team of advisors and also includes no fluff creator courses, a vibrant creator community, and more, all on a subscription basis with no long -term commitments.
And as ever, we still offer consulting and implementation work through our consulting firm, Level Up Creators. See the show notes for more info and our suite of high value free resources. And we'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast. Thanks.