Your Most Important Asset As A Creator

Most creators think that they need to become famous on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and so on, to succeed with their business.
So they optimize everything they do for the algorithm.
And don't get me wrong:
Growing on social media is important.
But it's one of the assets you own and control the least.

It's been proven in the past:
It only takes the smallest update to those platforms' algorithm for you to lose all the reach you had with the audience you built.
There are tons of creators this happened to in previous years, people who had millions of subscribers on Instagram, on YouTube, and so on...
Where the algorithm was updated to be more and more algorithmic and less and less based on subscribers, and inevitably their organic reach dropped enormously over time.

So the key to protect yourself against that is this:
Get people to your email list at all costs.
Yes, it's good to grow on social media, because that's what lets you get discovered by new people, but if people aren't on your list, that audience isn't really yours anyway.

And the thing is:
Making that transition between someone who watches your content on social media...
To someone who joins your list and your emails?
It's hard. Harder than getting them to like your reels or follow your X account.
Because the person needs to stop doing whatever else they were doing (most often mindlessly scrolling) and go to your website and purposefully leave their email.

So if you don't have a good strategy in place to acquire these subscribers?
It's going to be veryyyy complicated.

The solution, to easily and consistently grow your email list and convert your views and your followers into subscribers, is to have a lead magnet.
It's a strategy that has worked since the beginning of the internet and will keep working forever, because it's very simple:
The person leaves their email to get a valuable resource for free that you created expressly for them.
You simply create this lead magnet, pitch it in each of your content pieces, and get people to join.

And this lead magnet strategy works extremely well.
It's how I grew my two creator businesses.
First, my creator business in the SMMA space that I had in the French market:
I had a YouTube channel of 3000 subscribers and about 1500 subscribers on my email list, which earned me several thousand euros per month in courses and coaching in that space.
All those people joined because I had a lead magnet with tons of free resources inside that I pitched in every single one of my videos.
And it's also the exact strategy that I used to grow my email list with Noah's Ark from 0 to 3300 people in 18 months only.
(And if you're reading this today, it's probably bc you joined it)

Now, how do you create a good lead magnet?
First things first:
It's very important that it's not just "value".
People don't want to read 40-page PDFs for free anymore, and they don't want 3 hours of free video course either.
You need to give something that can be implemented fast.

That's why the best lead magnets are often things like templates or AI prompts, if you're in a niche where that's relevant.
But you can also be creative and do things like calculators, for example, a preconfigured spreadsheet that lets your client calculate things.
Or it can be a self-assessment scorecard, where people can evaluate themselves on a domain or a skill and see what they can improve.

It can apply in plenty of domains; you just have to be creative.
It can also be lists of resources, lists of questions to ask, lists of links if you're in a domain where knowing how to find resources is super important.
It can even be the list of the 10 books that changed your life.
So it can really be many things; the important part is that it's something where people join your list and get value instantly.

In my case, I've always liked making my lead magnets so full of content that it's as if they could have been a paid course.
If you joined this list today, there's a 99% chance you're here because you joined either Noah's Ark Bank, which was my first lead magnet with Noah's Ark, or my new lead magnet, Sovereign Creator OS Lite.
And if you joined them, you saw how extremely complete it is.

Sovereign Creator OS Lite is a preconfigured Obsidian vault with dozens of notes, a structure, an architecture, AI prompts, templates, and resources, and it's instantly downloadable.
You can open it in Obsidian and use it instantly.
Honestly, it's a resource that could easily have been in a paid course, and the reason I do that is that it obviously incentivizes people to join the email list.
(And it also creates that feeling of "damn, if there is that much value in his free stuff, how much could they be in his paid stuff?)

Growing your email list is the first step to live the creator dream.
So here's what I'm commanding you to do:
Go to your fav AI agent...
(If you follow me, you probably have an Obsidian vault connected to your AI agent, and if not, I don't know what you're doing yet, but you absolutely need to set that up, so watch my videos to see how)
And send it the script of this email, and tell it:
"I want you to help me create a lead magnet for my business, and I want you to brainstorm 10 or 15 lead magnet concept ideas that can be relevant and interesting for my business, and then make me a suggestion."

From those ideas, you find the one that seems easiest to create while still bringing maximum value to your audience.
As I said, it needs to be something people instantly download and can use as soon as they download it, so no 30-page PDF, and no video course.
At most a 7-day email course on a skill or something specific; it's also doable, but honestly I'd still recommend focusing on something super concrete.

Another example, because I have ideas in mind: imagine you do book review videos.
You can make your video, and below each of your videos, make a lead magnet where there are your notes on that book, and people have to leave their email to get those notes.
So if you do specific content like that, you can create a lead magnet for each piece, where people watch the content for free and then want to join your lead magnet to get the additional resource you developed.
That's particularly useful when you do YouTube videos.

Now, if you do videos on Instagram or reels or whatever, your call to action at the end of your reel should promote your lead magnet all the time
It can be smth like:
If you want to get my list of X questions, or my template to do this, or the summary, or my process for this task, then reply with "random word" in the comments, and I'll send it to you in DM.
And in the DM, you send them the link so they sign up and leave their email.

You can also promote this lead magnet in other ways.
If you're on LinkedIn or Twitter, you can put the link in the first comment, so in your post's call to action it'll be:
"Look at the first comment to get my resource"
And the first comment is the link to your lead magnet.
You can also put it in your bio, obviously, your Instagram bio, your Twitter bio, or even your Substack, and people sign up to get the resource.
There are many ways to do this.

The important thing is that your sales funnel as a creator basically looks like this:
You create content on those social media platforms, you make the people who watch your content join your lead magnet, and then they're on your email list, and they receive your emails.
When you start, I really recommend sending emails regularly, at least once a week, though I think more is better at the start to create a deep relationship with your audience.

And then, when these people are in your list and have a relationship with you, you'll be able to pitch your products.
So that's the global funnel, and it all starts with the lead magnet.
Again, it's a universal strategy that has worked since the beginning of the internet and will keep working for all the years online businesses exist, so it's really a shame to skip it.
So I really recommend you set that up.

That's all for today's email.
If you want me to cover one of your questions, don't hesitate to let me know by replying to this email, and I'll do a dedicated email to answer it.
Thanks for reading...
And welcome back to the Ark.
Noah.

P.S. I currently have two one-on-one coaching spots available.

All my former coaching clients have finished their contracts with me, so now I have two spots freed up.

If you want me to support you in building your own AI second brain system and developing your creator business with it, including all the strategy, the monetization, and the systems to set up...

Then reply "Lead Magnet" to this email, and I'll send you the details of my coaching.