Content creation is one of the biggest obstacles to platform-builders. For most people, it’s an issue of just finding the time to curate and craft valuable content.
For Matt McWilliams, time wasn’t the problem. He’d just been fired for the fourth time. With an infant daughter and a wife to support, he knew he needed to make a big life shift.
Years earlier Matt had been fired by his own father—the day after Matt’s birthday. Following that firing by his dad, he eventually found his niche and built his career in online marketing. He won awards, helped build a startup as their first employee based in the founder’s garage, and learned how to leverage affiliate marketing.
Unfortunately, that all came crashing down when he was let go from that once thriving startup. This time he decided to build a business on his own platform teaching other people to do what he knew so well: affiliate marketing.
Hacking the Content Creation Model
There was just one problem. Matt didn’t like writing. Creating a blog and filling it with content just wasn’t his thing. So, true to his track record, he “hacked” the problem and found a solution that worked perfectly for him.
Matt discovered that he could record videos, post them on his blog and then repurpose them. He posted multiple videos each week, and then used that content for podcasts, social media posts, and blog content.
That said, it didn’t come easy. Matt was terrified of making videos!
“It held me back from creating fast content that could easily be repurposed later. I did a 30-day video challenge where I did a video every day for 30 days … it worked!”
Finding Community
Another piece of Matt’s success was finding community inside Platform University itself:
Without Platform University, I honestly don't know where I would be today. No doubt in my mind that I could find most of the stuff I learned inside Platform University if I spent hundreds of hours on Google, but it made it SO easy to learn what I needed to learn and connect with amazing people. Best investment I ever made in my business and myself.
It’s been five years since Matt started his own platform. Since then he has built an email list of more than 10,000 subscribers, averages around 70,000 visitors a month to his website, and has been able to hire a team of five employees to come alongside him. On top of all that, Matt’s been able to find purpose helping others.
“Every single day almost we get an email saying that we’ve changed someone’s life. Literally almost every day.”
Matt’s Best Advice
If you ask Matt his advice, he’ll tell you the three big keys to his success:
- Consistent content. “Every day, create something. It might be a two-minute video or audio. It might be writing or recording a blog post. It might be a single idea for an email. But every day, create content.”
- Build a team before you need one. “If you can afford it at all, invest in someone even 5 hours a week to help take care of the tasks you don’t enjoy or aren’t skilled at.”
- Stop asking the question “How can I do that?” and start asking “Who do I already know who can do that?” “It’s a shift that takes you from trying to learn to do everything yourself to realizing that someone else already knows what you need to know.”
Matt likes to call himself a five-year “overnight” success story. Faced with few options, he kept going. He figured out a way to create content when most people would have quit.
If you need proof that persistence pays off, Matt is your role model. “When I first started, no one was reading. Then a few people were reading and watching and listening. Then some more and some more. Today we have nearly 70,000 readers a month and last year we just missed $500,000 in revenue. But it all started with that first reader and that first sale.”
Every day, create something. It might be a two-minute video or audio. It might be writing or recording a blog post. It might be a single idea for an email. But every day, create content.
