Welcome to the Profitable Speaking Podcast. I'm Brad Houck. Today we're going to ask the big question. What will still be relevant in 20 years? Well that's the evergreen advantage. We'll look at the timeless motivators that always sell, how to build frameworks at last, and why people build shortcuts, not skills. And finally, how to design memberships and communities that grow into value over time. Before we jump in, I've got a free resource for you. If you'd like to launch your own course in just one weekend, head over to mrwebmarketing.com and grab the free download. It's a step-by-step that'll help you get started first. So, what is evergreen? Evergreen to me is one of the key concepts of growing a business. You can be trendy, you can be on trend and all those sorts of things. But if you don't create evergreen content, you're going to have to keep reinventing yourself. And I've been there, so I do understand this. As someone who's spoken in the technology sector, I started out talking about SEO, and then people would say, Can you tell us about building websites? And then what about social media? As all these things started to grow and become more popular. So I was constantly having to evolve and produce new content. And it was extremely difficult on me. My business was search engine optimization, ranking up in Google. And so that's where most people would end up working with me to start off with, and then we'd look at the other parts of their marketing. But I understood as a speaker that I was speaking to topics that people wanted to hear. Whereas I'd stand there and I'd watch my friends who were talking about leadership or other business topics that were evergreen, and they didn't need to change. They keep literally using almost the same speech time and time again. And I never got that opportunity. It just wasn't in it for me. So evergreen ever sells is the key thing I think you need to remember here. And that's the core concept of this. The best evergreen products, services, speeches never go out of date. Now, there's lots of different principles on how you can do this, but the key thing I want you to think about is that the principles and the content stay the same. The how-to and the application of that principle may change. So the core concept might be leadership, but how you apply that leadership might change. Or the core concept might be marketing online and it might be SEO, but now it's about social media. So things change over time, but you keep your core concepts. And I'll talk more about frameworks and things like that as we move forward. So you'll often see that some training courses, for example, the people who do win friends and influence people, they have things like since 1912, and they've been selling their courses for that long. And you'll see this throughout the industry. If you look around, you'll start to see books that have been around forever. And from those books, often, because books were always the starting point back in the old days, I say inverted commerce, you see these training courses that are built on those, and people have made millions and millions of dollars over the years selling training courses off that original book, that original framework, because the content is timeless. One of my key principles that I've discovered is that when you're thinking about Abergreen, more often than not, you're talking about things that affect a person directly. Everything else changes. Business frameworks change, marketing frameworks change, but people don't change. Yes, they'd like to think they do, but underneath all that, we are very similar as we know, and as psychology changes, we're learning more about ourselves. But in the end, we're all looking for certain things. So timeless quality equals long-term profitability. And these are a key thing to think about. You're looking for that long-term profitability. What if you could build a course and over the next 20 years keep selling that course and become the number one person in the world for that thing? Do you think you would get some market cutthrough? Yes, you would. But if you pick an evergreen topic, for example, I talk about developing micro courses. Training is not going away, but how we train is changing. People are looking for smaller chunks of learning. So, for example, the free giveaway that I mentioned at mrwebmarketing.com is a perfect example of this. It's a lead into my micro course, and it will help you get started producing a course on the weekend. The key thing about that is it's evergreen. People are always going to want to learn stuff. There will always be a market for training. So let's have a look at the six universal market motivators. When we talk evergreen, we're always talking about universal markets. The first one is wellness. Wellness is a market that has grown exponentially over the last 20 years, and it will continue to grow. It will never go away. As people do less body function work, for example, digging ditches and farming fields, wellness will become even more important because people want to stay healthy. They'll want to live longer lives. Yes, we have medicines that can help us live longer lives, but having a healthy body is also part of that. Staying alive and not having a healthy body and a healthy mind is not all that good. So wellness is a key area. So you've got fitness and all those aspects built into wellness. The second one is wealth. Wealth creation will never go away. People will always want more money. No matter how much money they have, all we've got to do is look at our billionaires. They're greedy for more money. Everybody wants more money. It's a fact of life. And no matter how much you don't like it, my personal opinion is that money makes the world go around and it certainly makes life easier. Money can't buy you happiness. It's true in many ways, but boy, it can make the trip very much more fun. So the third one is health. So a little bit tie into wellness, but different in that it's probably more around medicines and those sorts of things rather than wellness. So people are looking to stay healthy. That's really important. Personal development is another area that never goes away. That covers things like leadership and all of those aspects. So you're Anthony Robbins, for example. Anthony Robbins was massive in the 80s. He's still massive today. He still gets a million people on a YouTube live stream. So personal development's not going away. Another one is love. We're all looking for love. It is a universal market motivator. So people who work in that area, helping people connect with other people, are always going to have a market. It's not going to go away. And in fact, as we know, the world is becoming a more lonely place. More people around the world are spending their time alone and going to work and then alone or working from home. And love is a really important part of overcoming that, hopefully, for them. So ask yourself, where are you? What's your position within one of these eternal markets? Now there is probably others, but they're the main ones that I look at. Money's one that I didn't mention, but probably is one of the market motivators. Wealth and money are two different things, in my opinion. Sometimes it's about managing money rather than making wealth. But can't close together. So how do you build a framework around evergreen content? Because the key is a framework. If you have a framework, you can sell it over and over again. And often I see people on stage and they'll bring up their framework, they'll draw a diagram, and I completely get it straight away that this is their framework. And everybody in the room understands what they're talking about because they're working on a framework. So what are we looking at here? We need to build around a single framework, a theory or a system. You can use any one of the words. A theory is a way of thinking. A system is a series of steps, and a framework is a set of steps that click together to work. You can interpret that any way you like, but I can say framework is the easiest way to look at it. More often you'll see theories used when you're dealing with people problems, so wellness or personal development, love, those sorts of things. Frameworks you'll see around businesses and same with systems. These create the foundation for your sustainable business. By selling your framework that people can apply in their life or their business or whatever, that is something you can repeat over and over again. If you can create an evergreen framework that people follow, and it can evolve with technology, for example, if you're in that area, or it can evolve with people if you work with people, then you can keep selling that over and over. And as I said previously, a perfect example of that is to look at a book like How to Win Friends and Influence People and how the stories and the framework that's built into that book is still taught today over and over. Once you have a framework, it allows you to leverage your time and your content and your knowledge repeatedly because everything you teach people is around that framework. So my framework for creating microcourses, I can teach you lots of things around that. I can teach you about promoting your micro course. I can teach you about recording podcasts to support your micro course. I can teach you about YouTube and how the algorithm works. All these angles, content creation points that I can put around my topic, around my framework that I've created. It doesn't stop me from talking about that topic specifically and selling that information, but I can create information around it without giving away the bit that I get paid for. So you can leverage your time because once you know how to do it, it becomes very easy to teach. You bring new content into that and you bring in new stories to keep it interesting. And you can repeat it over and over. And even people that have seen you before will come and watch you again because they probably haven't applied all of the framework that you've developed. When you're doing this, think reusable and scalable rather than one-off. This is the key. Again, evergreen, reusable and scalable. And that's, for example, why I like talking about courses, because courses are reusable. There's always new people want to know things, and they're scalable. I don't have to be there to teach it if I put it on YouTube, for example, and someone can watch that micro course on YouTube in their own time. Or I can sell private access. It's up to me how I do that. If you do one-off content, I believe that any one-off content that you create, for example, this podcast episode is a one-off piece of content. If you create that sort of content, it is a lead-in to your other content. So it's built around your theme. And in this case, the podcast is around profitable speaking. And what I do is work with entrepreneurs to help them optimize and accelerate their business and develop new income streams. And speakers are my favorite entrepreneurs. So this content helps, even though it's one off, it helps people see what it is that I do and how I can help them. Another aspect of your framework is it can be built into your business. So you can develop a brand around it, you can have a series of products built off it, and you can create content on a regular basis of it. So a framework, you look around you, I guarantee that you can think of many speakers or many people you've seen on TV or podcasts or YouTube that have a scalable system that they sell. And you'll see that in the funnel approach because they'll have a lead magnet that will direct you to their site and get you interested in what they're talking about, and make it that you understand that they're the person that can help you solve that problem in your life. And that will lead into you purchasing either consulting or time with them or their course or their membership, whatever it happens to be. Point number four that I want to cover is people buy shortcuts, not skills. Now, this is really important. People buy shortcuts to success, not skills or knowledge. We don't go to learn things just because we want to learn them. Most people have moved past that stage when they're an adult. Yes, they'll read books and they'll watch documentaries and things to learn, but that's often kind of a passive. Oh, I found this, that's interesting. More often than not, the reason they're doing it is they're looking to achieve a certain goal. And by reading the book or watching the show or going to this presentation that they're at, they are trying to shortcut some of the learning because what you know is the bits to leave out to get there faster. So if people are paying you for their course, sorry, if people are paying you for your course, they're paying you because they want to shortcut the learning. They don't want to learn all the other stuff that you've learned over the many years. They want to know what's really important. The skills and the knowledge are a byproduct of that. So when you're producing your content, your evergreen content, focus on providing solutions and shortcuts. This is absolute key. Offer a clear path to the results and not just educating people. You really are looking to say, if you do this and this, you'll come out here and you'll be able to do that. And that's really key. As a teacher, I know in the classroom, we talk about, we have lesson plans, and we follow those lesson plans. And there's a reason for that. And I talk about this in Microcourse Profits. The reason is because after many years of teaching, they have developed these frameworks because we know it covers all types of learners. We know that it steps learners through the process, and we know that 90% of the room are going to know how to do that thing by the end of the lesson because of the process. So it has a clear path that everybody can understand. It's not just about telling them how to do something. We don't just sit you there and teach you how to use basic algebra, for example. We step you through the process and it builds on itself till you know how to do it. When you're developing evergreen content, focus towards the higher level concepts. If you get down into the nitty-gritty of each step, you will get caught up in stuff that goes out of date. So, for example, when I'm talking about producing a course, I might say, Well, you need to get this camera and this microphone. And if you have those and you plug them into your computer and you put them into this port, you'll be able to record your podcast or your video. The fact of the matter is, that camera and that microphone will not be available in 10 years. Let's face facts. So if I say you need a good quality microphone, but don't spend too much to get started, and even your camera on your phone will be more than enough to shoot your first course. That's all you need to know. Now, that says you can use any camera and you can use any microphone to start off. I'm not telling you which port to plug it into because the ports will change. When I first started, we had serial ports and now we have USB-C ports and they are completely different. So stick to the higher level concept rather than focusing in on low-level concepts that are going to change. Remember, we're looking for something that's going to last for a long time. We don't want to have to recreate the wheel every time things change, new microphone comes out, a new camera comes out. That's not the goal here. So build for longevity and community. There's many ways that you can build your business. But one of the ones that I particularly like is membership sites. So you can have reusable tools, templates, videos, resources in there and give people access to that. If you sell a course just on its own, that's great, but you've got to keep selling courses. If you build a membership site, people become a member and they stay a member for the ongoing resources that are added there. So it's much easier to keep a member than it is to sell courses over and over. So if you look to build for friendship, try and build a bit of community, give people help and be involved with them, people will stay around and you will get that longevity out of your business. And it will help keep your and it will help keep your content evergreen as well. Over time, you'll continue to grow a large resource worth more. Yes, at the start, people are paying $100 and they're only getting $100 worth. But towards the end, 10 years down the track or 20 years or 30 years, they're going to pay $100 a month for thousands and thousands of dollars worth of content that they can go back and look at. And they will see things change. You might be talking about this camera here. You know, that content's now out of date. There's new updated video. That's fine because it's just continually adding more content. You can build a series if you're building a community, and you can use consistent branding across that series. For example, my profits books, I've launched Microcourse Profits, AI-powered profits, and I'm in the process of finishing off conversion profits, which is all about making your website and content convert and sell better. That's my consistent series that I'm building there, and you'll notice that in my stuff. Use color and layout covers and icon sets to keep consistency. Absolutely. You're building a brand here. We're talking long-term. Yes, your brand can change, but don't go for major changes. We've all seen companies that have rolled out brand changes and had to flip back because it did more damage than good, and it really wasn't necessary. Yes, you can update, keep things clean, but don't worry about it. And try applying your thinking across a range of genres and topics. You might start out doing your content for accountants and then maybe do it for lawyers and then maybe do it for mechanics. Try applying it across different areas. So ask yourself these questions. This will help you know if you're working on evergreen content or what off. What will be relevant in 20 years' time? What has never changed in my industry? Can I apply a framework or system to this? And is my market or motivation focused on a specific outcome? Remember, evergreen ever sells. Keeps selling forever. Everyone should have at least one evergreen book, evergreen course, or an evergreen membership site. And look, any product can be evergreen. There are decisions that you can make to build it that way. Yes, you already have a course, or yes, you already have a book, but could you produce something evergreen off that or could you alter it slightly to make it evergreen? Either way, it's up to you. So that's a wrap for today. Remember, Evergreen Ever sells. Aim to have at least one evergreen book course or membership working for you. If you want a simple way to start new income streams, grab my book, Microcourse Profits, from Amazon. It shows you how to build small, repeatable products that keep selling. Thanks for listening. Subscribe and share this with a speaker friend. And please leave a quick review. I'm Brad Houck, and I'll catch you in the next episode of the Profitable Speaking Podcast.