A Manifesto for the Impact Generation
What impact will you make in your corner of the digital universe?
This Is Your Moment. Seize It.
You are invited to join the Impact Generation.
Our mission is to identify and develop people and businesses of impact. We only want to mentor a specific type of entrepreneur.
You are a good fit if you have these qualities:
You have a message, craft or expertise that you want to share more widely - Your desire is to monetize your craft to an online audience that values your expertise.
You think of your work as a craft - The work you do is more than a hobby or way to make money. Your work is how you create meaning for yourself and others. It is how you create work that matters and inspires.
Your aim is to delight a passionate niche audience - You are not after mass appeal. Your goal is to stake out a corner of the digital universe where you can ply your trade and delight small groups of people who appreciate your knowledge.
Your desire is to make an impact in your corner of the digital universe - You have an idea, message, or passion and you want to make a difference in a context that matters to you.
As I unpack this manifesto, you’ll see how these ideas work together to communicate a different way of marketing and a more inspiring way to build an online business.
Introduction
We live in extraordinary times.
You now have the power to broadcast a message to half the world’s population right from the palm of your hand. This also means that you have the ability to reach the right people to create an impact business AROUND your craft.
If you have a roadmap. This manifesto forms the foundational ideas for that roadmap.
I have divided this issue of the Impact Generation newsletter into two parts.
Part One - Insights into Five Internet Marketing Trends
In the first part, I break down five Internet marketing trends and the opportunities they present for sovereign creators.
These insights will give you 5-D vision to see through the chaos that is the modern digital marketing landscape (and profit from it).
Part Two - The Five Pillars of an Impact Business
In the second part, I break down the Impact Generation’s business building concepts. Putting these ideas into practice will separate you from the masses and allow you to monetize your craft by attracting and delighting a tiny audience.
Welcome to the Impact Generation. We hope you will stay and contribute.
Part One - Insights Into Five Trends That Will Give You 5-D Vision to See Through the Chaos of the Digital Marketing Landscape
“Unless you can see the landscape clearly, you will not be able to seize this unique moment in history.”
- The Impact Generation
Let’s now pull back the curtain on five Internet marketing trends.
As we review each one, we’ll tell you where the opportunities lie for you as a sovereign creator. Folks are going to accuse you having x-ray vision into the digital marketing world.
We prefer to call call it 5-D vision.
Trend #1 - You now have a professional grade production company in the palm of your hand and access to a global audience of billions
They have made it too easy.
Any person with a decent smartphone now has the ability to push out professional grade images, audio and video. In addition, five social media companies provide access to a global audience numbering in the billions.
It has never been easier to broadcast a global message. However, it has never been harder to get noticed.
Without a concrete strategy, you will drown among billions of creators who have the same tools and access that you do.
Impact Generation Opportunities
What are the opportunities for sovereign creators like you?
With so much technical power at your fingertips, one of the biggest opportunities is to begin seeing yourself as a global multimedia publishing brand.
As the Product Matrix below demonstrates, this can include incorporating e-commerce, digital products, workshops, group coaching and even consulting into your business model.
This gives you multiple ways to monetize your craft. And if you cultivate an audience using our strategies, you won’t have to sell your soul in the process, or even do much selling at all.
Impact Generation Secret - The live Zoom workshop in the matrix above is one of the easiest “products” to create and it provides a hefty return on investment.
Secondly, our impact strategy revolves around you standing out from the masses. There is no point in being able to broadcast to the world, if you get lost in the marketing noise.
Instead, you must be able to broadcast a clear signal that breaks through the clutter and calls out to the right person. This begins by doubling down on your craft and creating an offer that resonates with a tiny audience.
It’s not much more complicated than that. However, you must complete the right steps, in the right order, to accomplish these goals.
We know the way. We can be your guide.
Trend #2 - The COVID aftermath and the need for expert guides
In March of 2020, seven billion people and 100s of millions of entities were forced on the cloud OVERNIGHT!
It was mayhem.
No one had a clue, and the majority have been floundering there ever since.
The graph above captures the essence.
On the left, you have businesses, churches, non-profits, NGOs, digital entrepreneurs, workers, and individuals, and they are struggling to navigate the treacherous online currents on the right.
There are dozens of programs and ideas to master.
I call these domains.
For example, there are domains to navigate a website, social media, email marketing, and e-commerce, to name a few. Each domain is complex. And there is massive confusion at any place in the marketing chain.
So what people need most at this moment is an expert guide who can be trusted.
They need someone like you, who has mastered a domain (or a craft), and can provide unique answers to complex problems. And if you do that with a soul, you will be unstoppable.
Impact Generation Opportunities:
What are the opportunities for sovereign creators like you?
You must recognize that billions of people are casting about, drifting, and looking for a life raft from someone who knows what they are doing.
Sell the Nail
I call it “selling the nail.”
You place yourself between the market(s) and the domain(s) you want to impact, and you serve as an expert guide helping your peeps through the maze.
You get to choose the nail (the domain). The analogy of the nail means that it can be a micro or esoteric expertise.
Whatever most interests you.
It can be something on the technical side (like a software tool, business idea or process) that helps a particular group of people. It can be a hobby or passion. Or it can even be a cool concept like Stoicism for modern people.
Doesn’t matter.
As Andre Chaperon reminds us in one of his posts, the Internet is like Tokyo.
Want to focus on delighting drinkers of exotic whiskey? You can do that in Tokyo and on the Internet. When you can reach a global audience of billions, you have the luxury of getting as granular as you like in your passion or craft.
After all, you are only after 1,000 true fans (as a start of course).
There’s no shame in growing!
Trend #3 - Soulless marketing
Something happened to the Internet and e-commerce as they matured, and it wasn’t pretty.
We all started out honoring the great direct response copywriters of old, Halbert, Schwartz, and Hopkins among many others.
They did a ton of research, on the product, competition, competitors’ products, and even their own product. The deep research is what allowed them to make unique observations that resonated with the needs of their customers.
Nowadays, the customer is buried beneath layers of overly engineered and optimized linear sales funnels.
The goal is to push people through the sales process as quickly as possible using psychological manipulation, scarcity, urgency, upsells and all the rest.
The click has become more important than the person behind the click.
Impact Generation Opportunities
What are the opportunities for sovereign creators like you?
Within the Impact Generation, we provide an alternative to soulless marketing. It’s called people-based marketing (which is one of the pillars of an Impact Business). It also includes attracting and delighting a passionate niche audience (another pillar).
Going niche is powerful as you’ll see, because it allows you to go deep on your craft with a group of people who are passionate about what you bring to the table.
Trend #4 - The wheels have come off content creation
As if right on cue, and coinciding with soulless marketing, is the birth of AI created content.
With the birth of AI content, we have hit death speed on content creation. We are now in the middle of an explosion of content generation, and it’s only going to get exponentially worse from here.
This is great news for sovereign creators.
When the crowd goes shallow, you go deep.
Impact Generation Opportunities
What are the opportunities for sovereign creators like you?
Within the Impact Generation, we’ll show you how to write Signature Content. This is the most in-depth set of articles on your topic. This is going to elevate you above the noise and position you as the expert on your topic.
Trend #5 - The birth of creator platforms
The influencer economy was about reacting to social media algorithms to monetize the attention of followers. This had many unintended consequences for you as an entrepreneur.
Let us count the ways:
Content churn for little algorithm love - You are forced to post multiple times per day since each post is only shown to 6-10% of your followers.
You are building your business on borrowed territory - Your audience does not belong to you. It belongs to Meta or Google. They can take it away at any moment and they don’t have to give you a specific reason.
Highly distracting and distorted ecosystem in which to sell - The average social media newsfeed is bombarded with dozens of offers every single minute. Why would you want to compete against so much distraction?
Social media is great for one thing. To gather and then move a percentage of your followers into your own group of engaged subscribers.
Risk of shadow ban or outright cancellation - The number of allowable opinions keeps shrinking in our culture. All of the social media platforms gleefully cancelled accounts during election season and the pandemic.
Impact Generation Opportunities
What are the opportunities for sovereign creators like you?
For starters, you have more options now. With services like Patreon, SaaS products like Beehiiv and Convertkit, and sites like Medium and Substack, there are now many places where you can get paid directly for your writing and work.
As a sovereign creator, you now have access to your audiences without the interference of an algorithm. In addition, you can sell directly to your audiences and more easily monetize your expertise.
Conclusion
We have presented five marketing trends, and how you as a sovereign creator can maneuver them to your advantage to make an impact.
To review, here are the trends:
#1 - Awesome technical power and reach at your fingertips - You have a professional grade production company in the palm of your hand, and access to a global audience of billions. To leverage this power, you must begin seeing yourself as a global multimedia publishing brand.
#2 - Post-COVID and the need for expert guides - What the world needs most is an expert guide in every domain. You choose the domain and go all in (and clean up in the process).
#3 - Soulless marketing - We must replace coercion-based marketing and its focus on metrics with influence-based marketing and its focus on people. Your aim should be to delight a tiny audience.
#4 - AI content creation - The wheels have come off the content creation bandwagon. However, when they go shallow, you go deep with signature content.
#5 - The rise of creator platforms - The influencer based economy with its focus on algorithms and social media controls is giving way to a creator based economy. Creator platforms now provide you with more control over your work, and direct access to the audiences you want to serve.
Now it’s time to put it all together into one package. Up next are the five pillars of an Impact Business.
Part Two - Five Pillars For Creating an Impact Business Around Your Craft or Expertise
It’s now time to start building your Impact Business around your craft or expertise.
An Impact Business consists of you:
as a sovereign creator
monetizing your craft
by attracting and delighting a tiny audience
and making an impact in a context that matters to you
The result is a way for you to generate income by creating something that resonates with the right group of people.
There are the five pillars of an Impact Business:
You are building a world and not just a business
Your work as your craft
People-based marketing
The Internet is like Tokyo
Your signature content strategy
Pillar #1 - You Are Building a World and Not Just a Business
World building is a rich concept which will take many issues to unpack. For now, you can create a breakaway competitive advantage if you begin thinking about your business as a world unto itself.
Some context.
World building is a concept that is best known from the cinema, television series literature. Think of the worlds created by:
George Lucas (American Graffiti, Star Wars), James Cameron (Avatar), or Ridley Scott (Aliens, Blade Runner).
C.S. Lewis for the Narnia series and J.R.R. Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings series.
Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers who are beloved by their audiences PRECISELY because children loved the worlds they created (the sets, characters and stories).
Every world has a culture, vibe or message that is subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) communicated. Some worlds have a history or backstory. All of them have characters, and stories.
And of course, EVERY world has rules (and you should begin thinking about some for your world).
You are the director
When you perceive your business as a world, you get to create the look and feel of EVERY ELEMENT in that world.
And here’s why this matters
Everything in your world will resonate with a certain type of person and draw them in to your sphere of influence. By the same token, it will repel those who are not right for you or your brand.
This means that the elements of your world FILTER IN those who make the best prospects and FILTER OUT those that don’t.
So it’s important to think about the kind of world you want to build:
What kind of culture or vibe do you want to communicate? Funny, irreverent, serious, academic, quirky, creative?
Does your world have a backstory or history? An overarching narrative? Origin stories or your story of struggle and growth fit well here.
Who are the main characters? There is you, your customers, your products, and even your cat Maxwell! One prominent marketer often took his dog Zoe for walks on the beach where he recorded content for his peeps. Zoe appeared in several emails, and those recordings became the Zoe Chronicles (a separate product).
What are the values or philosophy (of life or marketing) you want to promote? At the Impact Generation we like to use terms like craft, impact, people-based marketing, tiny audiences, and worlds.
What rules do you want to enforce in your world?
What experiences will you create where your craft and the people you want to serve intersect? Here is where a live workshop or mini-retreat can really shine.
How does your physical world contribute to the world you build? This vegan influencer relocated to Costa Rica with hubby and kids. They seem to be living life on their terms in a colorful world they have created for themselves and their fans.
You Get to Populate Your World With Cool Shtuff
Finally, the best part of world building is that you get to experiment with all the insanely cool stuff that you like. You decide what is interesting and meaningful to you and do that.
This is the opposite of following the crowd, swiping files, looking at what’s trending or “what’s working now.”
There is a maxim in psychology that states the most personal is the most universal. It suggests that we all share basic human motivations, values and personalities.
This means that even though your craft may be something deeply personal, it is going to resonate with a much larger group given our shared humanity. This is especially the case when you consider the size of the Internet (see Pillar #4).
Conclusion
So this is the first pillar: you are building a world and not just a business.
You build it to your liking, then you invite others to join you in the experience. This is what turns your work into a craft and into something that has an impact on people’s lives.
This is also what will separate you from the masses.
In upcoming issues of the Impact Generation newsletter, I’ll take you behind-the-scenes of two world-class, world-builders: Ben Settle and Andre Chaperon.
Pillar #2 - Your Work as Your Craft
The phrase “your work as your craft” represents a way of approaching what you do.
There are many facets:
Your work has meaning for you - No matter your expertise, the work you perform has meaning for you. It fulfills you in a deep way. It allows you to create something unique or beautiful or it allows you to solve problems for your audiences (which is satisfying).
It is meant to evoke a sense of vocation or mission - You can have a job, career, vocation or mission. The last one is the perfect blend of your expertise, what you love to do, and the ability to impact others. Some folks have described their mission as what they were born to do.
It is meant to highlight your unique superpower, expertise, or talent - Your craft is a blend of your expertise, experience, and creativity. It is constantly being refined as you work out more solutions to the challenges your peeps encounter.
It allows you to make an impact - One of the most fulfilling aspects about a craft is that you get to make a dent in your tiny corner of the digital universe. You get to create something that resonates with a tiny audience AND you get paid in the process.
This is digital marketing nirvana. It’s what we want to impart to you within the Impact Generation.
Pillar #3 - People-Based Marketing
One of the most important maxims of the Impact Generation, especially when it comes to people-based marketing, is that “everything impacts the quality downstream.”
Every element of your business (your world) is either contributing to produce a quality customer or it is hindering that process.
Everything from your headlines and messages, to your market, funnel creation, the traffic sources you use, how you generate leads, and your follow-up strategy, has a direct impact on the quality of your customers downstream.
You cannot poison the river (with manipulative tactics for example), and expect to get healthy fish downstream.
This is why math equations on linear funnels just don’t work.
A 2x increase in opt-in rates DOES NOT guarantee a 2x increase in every step of the funnel. You may well end up with more subscribers, but of poorer quality. Indeed, you may see a downturn in open rates and a downturn in sales.
People are not linear, and a change in one part of the system may destabilize the whole.
Two other principles guide people-based marketing.
Focus on people over statistics
This is so obvious that it’s almost embarrassing to make it a principle. However, in today’s metric obsessed marketing world, it is easy to ignore the human factor.
When you internalize that behind EVERY click there is a real person, you will change your approach to marketing. You will change your headlines, messaging, social media posts, funnels, e-mails, and perhaps even your product mix and how you deliver them.
Within the Impact Generation we focus on market research precisely so we can understand the audiences we want to serve. Are you intimately familiar with the needs, hopes, dreams, fears, problems, desires, and goals of the people in your markets?
If not, this should be your number one goal.
And you don’t discover those things so you can “agitate the pain” in your copy or exploit this knowledge through some type of trap hook or click bait. You do it because you are empathetic to your prospects’ needs.
Focus on impact and service
Closely related to our focus on people, is a commitment to make a difference in our audiences’ lives and to serve them in a way that “does no harm.”
The most articulate expression of this principle is Jay Abraham’s “Strategy of Preeminence.” In the following quote, Jay talks about selling insurance, but his advice transcends products and markets.
He states:
Preeminence means being seen in your market as the most trusted advisor for life. You are there to make a profound and sustaining difference in their lives [your audience members].
You are there for them, forever, whether any money exchanges hands or not.
Jay Abraham - Strategy of Preeminence
This is a remarkable approach to marketing. You are there to make a profound and sustaining difference in people’s lives whether any money exchanges hands or not.
Again, everything you do upstream impacts the quality of your audience downstream.
This is an incredibly liberating idea because it allows you to get back to what you love to do, which is help people. While the tech stuff is important, it does not drive the relationship with your audiences.
Service means many things in a people-based marketing system:
You take on the role of a trusted mentor or guide first, and marketer second. As I mentioned in Part One, this is what people desperately need in today’s digital world.
Your offer / product is the best solution for that person. This is difficult to engineer with traditional marketing since numbers matter more than the right product / market fit. We should also ask ourselves if a one-time offer is really in the best interest of our customers.
You win with influence not coercion - You win when you can influence folks over to your point of view or your way of solving a problem (without coercion or manipulation).
You have tested what you recommend - This means you can stand behind any product or service you recommend. Indeed, my advice would be to never recommend anything you have not personally tested or benefitted from.
Your copy is empathetic - In your copy, true warmth and caring come through, not the relentless hype or psychological manipulation of modern marketing.
Pillar #4 - The Internet is Like Tokyo
The answer to soulless marketing and to mass produced content is to aim for delighting a small audience. This principle is captured in the metaphor “The Internet is like Tokyo” which is a slight adaptation of the original.
The original comes from an an interview that Derek Thompson did with Masters in Business (link here for full interview).
Derek is a writer for the Atlantic, and in answering a question about how writers can break through, this was his advice.
It is applicable across any discipline or market.
“There's a paradox to scale. People who want to be big sometimes think, “I have to immediately reach the largest possible audience.” But no, weirdly. The best way to produce things that take off is to produce small things. To become a small expert, to become the best person on the internet at understanding the application of medicaid to minority children or something like that.
And the reason I think this is true is I call it's like my Tokyo example. If you go to Tokyo, you'll see there are all sorts of strange shops. They'll be a shop that's only nineteen seventies vinyl and nineteen eighties whiskey. And that doesn't make any sense if it's a shop in a Des Moines suburb, right, to exist in a Des Moines suburb, you have to be Subway. You have to hit the mass market immediately.
But in Tokyo, where there's thirty, forty million people within a train ride of the city, right then your market is forty million. And within that forty million, there's a couple of thousand people who love nineteen seventies music and nineteen eighties whiskey.
The Internet is Tokyo.
The Internet allows you to be niche at scale.
Here are a few takeaways.
First, to be niche at scale means that even though your craft, market or niche might appear narrow in scope, the size of the Internet audience is so vast, that your tiny audience can still be quite large.
Secondly, if your vibe is more offbeat, eccentric, weird, or quirky, it won’t matter. There are large pockets of weirdness in a virtual city of 5 billion people.
Why Tiny is Mighty
There are many advantages to adopting a tiny is mighty approach to building an audience (again, at first).
Your research can be more focused and in-depth - When you concentrate on getting to know a tiny audience, there is less background material to cover. You can also do deep dives on your audience’s profile. All of this helps with messaging and product development.
Your messaging will pop - When you try to reach the masses, you get plain vanilla messaging. Blah. But when you focus on a tiny audience you get message coherence combined with emotion. An ad for motorcycle riders will not create the same visceral reaction as one for white collar weekend warriors who drive a Harley.
Niche audiences tend to be more passionate - People love to be part of groups, especially VIP groups, or those who have particular hobbies or passions.
You escape the noise and hype of traditional marketing - There’s a certain grind now to traditional marketing campaigns and having to create complicated funnels with persuasive copy. Let everyone else fight it out with the piranhas.
Pillar #5 - Your Signature Content Strategy
The content churn is a difficult game to play.
If you want any chance of gaining traction you must post multiple times per day on social media, or create 2-3 pieces of content per week on a YouTube channel or a blog.
Ultimately, there is no guarantee you will break through. In addition, it can takes months of posting to see an impact. Finally, with organic followers / traffic, it is difficult to know if you are attracting the right audience for your business.
When They Go Shallow, You Go Deep
The antidote to content churn is to create signature content. Within the Impact Generation, we help you create the most in-depth set of articles on your topic. Even better, they position you as the expert in solving difficult problems for your audiences.
This does require research on your part, but the rewards will far outweigh the effort.
Another maxim here at the Impact Generation is “just do the friggin work.” By this we mean that you cannot shortcut your journey to greatness or success. You have to put in the reps.
You are not going to find a secret hack for content creation, and even if you do, it will be devoid of your personality, uniqueness and approach that you as a sovereign creator bring to the table.
Thus, you are better off creating 15-20 killer in-depth articles on your topic, craft or passion, even if it takes you a year, than writing 200 mediocre blog posts with warmed over information. (Unless you have an army of VAs like Gary Vee creating content, then ignore my advice.)
Here are some of the benefits of creating killer signature content:
You will become a better researcher and note taker.
You will be widely read, which will pay off dividends in practically any endeavor.
You will become a better writer / communicator.
You will be able to develop novel ideas or novel combinations of ideas.
Your articles will stand out from the static and noise. We don’t need another listicle.
Other people will want to refer, link to, and share your articles because they will be filled with rich insights.
One signature article can be reconfigured into dozens and dozens of derivative content pieces, images, social media posts, podcasts, and smaller blog articles.
Your Call to Action
We have reached the end of this manifesto.
I have given you five trends of the Internet and how you can turn these to your advantage as a sovereign creator. I have also discussed the five pillars of an Impact Business.
Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to make an impact in your tiny corner of the digital universe?
We are looking for a few good entrepreneurs to join our movement. At some point, we will open a mentoring option. If you are interested in becoming part of the Impact Generation, I would ask that you take two steps to show your desire.
First, subscribe to the Impact Generation newsletter. Over the next several months, I will dive deep into the concepts in this manifesto via this newsletter.
Secondly, hit return, and let me know 1) what is your craft or superpower with which you want to make an impact or 2) what you found most interesting in this manifesto that you are going to apply right away to your business.
Thanks for your time and attention. If you know someone who would be a good candidate for the Impact Generation, please share this newsletter with them via the share button below.
Now it’s time to make an impact!
Gustavo
NOTE: This article contains affiliate links to different resources. The Impact Generation receives a commission for anything you purchase through those links.