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Searchie Spotlight: Monetize Your Expertise: How To Offer The Perfect Free Vs. Paid Content Mix

Written by Tyler | Jul 4, 2023 7:43:11 PM

Watch Jerry's full Spotlight interview here!

As an entrepreneur who specializes in helping coaches, course creators and Membership owners attract and grow their leads through the effective use of social media, Jerry Potter has an abundance of helpful tips, tricks and insights to help you amplify your impact.

Jerry's journey from a radio personality, to helping entrepreneurs attract leads and generate sales through social media is both inspiring and insightful.

His passion for empowering others and creating meaningful connections shines through his work. 

Let's dive into the interview as he chats with Searchie’s Customer Success Lead, Paulina, and discover how Jerry leverages his expertise and the power of Searchie to transform the way entrepreneurs do business.

During this interview, we cover: 

  • The evolution of content creation
  • The ever-evolving social media landscape and how to narrow your focus to generate results 
  • How Searchie helped streamline business and transform how Jerry’s able to serve his clients
  • And A LOT more! 


    Spotlighter Bio
     

    Name: Jerry Potter

    Business: 5 Minute Social Media

    Niche: Jerry Potter is a dynamic entrepreneur and social media expert who specializes in helping coaches, course creators and Membership owners attract and grow their leads through the effective use of social media to amplify their impact and income through their knowledge and expertise.

Let’s Dive In With Jerry Potter!

Paulina at Searchie: I'd love it if you could start us off with the old faithful, tell us who you are, who you serve, and what market you're in.

Jerry: I work with entrepreneurs primarily coaches, course creators and Membership owners on attracting leads using social media and then converting them into sales.

So a lot of the social media education and coaching spaces are based on reach and views and some of these vanity metrics. 

So I've really narrowed down to focus on the things that I think are important and I find most people do, is actual leads and sales. And so I love what I do, much like Searchie, I could talk about social media all day as well.

Finding Purpose In Connecting With People:

Paulina at Searchie: What's driven you to where you are today?

Jerry: Well, I actually worked most of my career for about over 20 years as a radio personality or radio presenter.

My wife and I actually hosted morning radio shows all over the United States. After that the industry sort of went through some changes and it essentially became more automated and less connected. I realized that my love of it wasn't really about music, or the technology or anything like that, it was really about people and connecting with people.

And the beautiful thing that happened, 15 years ago now or whatever it was, you needed a corporation to have a show or to connect with people. Now we can literally all be media companies whether that's all you do, or you use it to promote your business. And so that was kind of the first step.

And then the next piece was really realizing how many people have something amazing to offer the world. Whether it's helping somebody achieve their dream or solve a problem or whatever it might be. And they were having trouble getting in front of them. 

I didn't know that this was something that came naturally to me at first until a few people kind of pointed it out, but it was like, oh, well I wanna make it easier for those people. So I love to think about the ripple effect, whether it’s somebody that is helping them solve a major problem or a nonprofit or whatever it might be, but that ripple effect that we can have on the world when we're all kind of helping each other. My main thing is like, look, you've got something that people need. Let's help them find out about you.

“I realized that my love of it wasn't really about music, or the technology or anything like that, it was really about people and connecting with people.” 

The Evolution Of Content Creation:

Paulina at Searchie: When it comes to the free and paid content, how do you decide what's the free content and what's the paid content, and what's the relationship between both types of content?

Jerry: Not that long ago, I was panicking over this exact question, what do you make free and what do you make paid? I kind of got to the point, a couple of things happened. I started offering some really low dollar content, like, hey, come learn this, it's gonna help you in your business. It's 10 bucks. And that triggered something for me. It made me sort of lean more into, an abundance mindset—even though it was 10 bucks.

I think when we start as an entrepreneur, we have a little bit more of a scarcity mindset. So I love that I made that shift. Now it really isn't a question that I think a lot about beyond just saying in the free content, I show the beginning stages, how to set up a Facebook business page, how to choose the proper Instagram profile, things like that. And then I do trainings just to kind of show people what's possible. 

Then in the paid content is where we really nail down into systems and implementation.

Social media is quickly becoming an industry kind of like health and fitness and weight loss.

We all know how to eat healthy, right? Nobody's sitting at home going, I assume these cookies are healthy. Like, we know fruits and vegetables and things like that, we just can't bring ourselves to do it. And social media a lot of the time is becoming similar to that.

People in this day and age know what to do. They just need the systems, the shortcuts, the implementation and the accountability to really put it into place. And so that's where a lot of my paid content sits.

“People in this day and age know what to do. They just need the systems, the shortcuts, the implementation and the accountability to really put it into place."

Streamlining Business With Searchie

Paulina at Searchie: How are you using Searchie specifically in your toolkit of how you serve entrepreneurs in terms of helping them move towards a more streamlined, simplified way of doing business?

Jerry: My original Membership, I was putting out a brand new 60 to 90 minute masterclass every single month. And to get the value, you had to set aside that time, and a full-time business owner, whether they are working full-time in their business or they've chosen lifestyle design and they only wanna work 20 hours a week, they don't have time for that, right? Unless it's gonna make a massive, massive impact.

Searchie allowed me to take that longer content and help people get to the part they want quicker.

Now the way that I'm doing it. I really love that Searchie allows me to have custom content in the Hub for each member, each student, each client. So one of the things that I do now in my social media leads lab Membership, is I do private post reviews.

Each member has a custom section inside Searchie, they're the only ones that can see it. And so they send me their copy for an instagram reel, or feed post, and I use the Searchie Chrome extension, I hit record, I walk through how I would improve it, I add it to their Playlist and I'm done. 

It helps them take action because they get this feedback beforehand, and their content performs better. That was one of the things that I could never have done without Searchie, but now I can offer that because Searchie allows that.

The other thing we do too is when we do live Q & A’s, I've got members all over the world, not everybody can come to a live Q & A, so we use the ability to share the link to a replay queued up to an exact moment. So if Jill asks a question and she's not on the Q & A, my team will send the link to Jill. And when Jill clicks on the link, if it's 18 minutes and 32 seconds in or whatever, it immediately goes: Jill's question was such and such, and I go right to answering it.

So again, this is saving my member's time and helping them get back to implementing as fast as possible.

The Power Of Recurring Revenue:

Paulina at Searchie: You mentioned something there in terms of having a Membership site specifically, and I wanted to ask about how having a recurring revenue stream like a Membership has impacted how you kind of allocate where you spend your time as an entrepreneur?

Jerry: I just sent an email to my list about how 2020 was the scariest year of my life. And not because of the reason that it was for a lot of us, that was the year, December, 2019, I quit my full-time job at the agency, said, okay, I'm going in, I'm gonna do this, and two weeks later my wife lost her job.

So all of a sudden here we were, two young kids, no official salary, health insurance benefits all just gone. So I went okay, we don't wanna lose the house, we wanna keep food on the table, what do we do?

So I started doing course launches and I would do a course launch and be like, okay, a month later it's like, oh, now we're back at zero. Okay, let's launch again. So in 2020 I did a course launch; I think it was like every seven weeks. I just kept launching it and launching it, it was exhausting and it was stressful having the income go up and down

This is where having a Membership has changed everything. Eventually I found Stu McLaren and, and everything changed from there. Now that I have recurring revenue we travel, I can take easy weeks if my kids are off school, I don't have to work all the time, or I can take a whole week off. 

Last week I went to have a retreat with my mastermind on the other side of the country, and I didn't have to work much in my business, but money still came in. A month before that, I went and spoke at a conference, same type of thing. And so the recurring revenue of memberships has changed everything: lower anxiety, better sleep, all of those things have been fantastic.

Paulina at Searchie: Jerry, that was incredible. I got shivers at the beginning when you were sharing your story. And I think that your story echoes with a lot of people in this similar space, where they worry about that stability and they don't wanna hustle for sales and they're looking for a more efficient way of doing things. 

So what strategies have you seen that have made a real difference for you when it comes to stability?

Jerry: Part of it was niching down, although many people would argue that my niche is still very broad, being multiple social media platforms. But, it's about creating something that is so unique that everything can be built around that. 

So now I have a framework that I teach called the DATE Framework (D-A-T-E), so I'm recreating all my content to fit that. It just started as a, look, I need to simplify this for people, what will I do?

And, what I didn’t expect, is now that it’s there; it's helped all of my members and even people in my free content have a much clearer picture of what to do and that's allowed them to take action quicker.

So it's certainly helped with the recurring revenue, but I think long term it's gonna help a lot more because you can't get it anywhere else.

“The recurring revenue of memberships has changed everything: lower anxiety, better sleep, all of those things have been fantastic.”

Paulina at Searchie: That’s an incredible answer and I especially resonate with what you were talking about, how clarity can really be what gives us those actionable steps that we're looking for to make a difference. 

Thank you so much for joining us today… I feel like everyone is gonna have something that they can take away from this conversation.

Jerry Potter's journey from radio personality to social media expert demonstrates the power of passion and the ability to adapt. By focusing on generating real results for entrepreneurs, he’s carved out a niche that truly makes a difference. Through Searchie, Jerry provides personalized content experiences, empowering entrepreneurs to amplify their impact on social media. As the digital and AI landscape evolves, Jerry Potter's expertise and commitment to helping entrepreneurs succeed will undoubtedly continue to shape the industry and inspire others to leverage the power of social media for their business growth. 

Catch Jerry’s full Searchie Spotlight interview here!

Thanks for reading! 

Want to learn more about Jerry’s business? Head over to his website here.

We’ll catch you in the next blog.

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