Local Businesses Owners Need Content Creators

When I say that local is where the gold mine is, I promise you I am not talking about JUST restaurants & bars down the street from you. The restaurant industry itself probably deserves its own newsletter since I am not exactly sure what it wants to do at the moment. But most owners refuse to invest in themselves, even with the simplest marketing plan and budget in mind. That can be really frustrating but I don’t want you to automatically cut them out when I am talking about local businesses.

Local to me means your real estate agent, dentist, therapist, banker, yoga instructor, gym owner, tax person, boutique shop owner, spas, salons, barbers, e-commerce/brick and mortar hybrids, just to name a few. I take the same approach that I was telling you about with Liquid Death a couple of weeks ago, you have to find people or businesses that you would LOVE to help, not just want to take their money. You don't and shouldn't wait around for a startup to company to make you a great living, a lot of the times the road to stability is in your own backyard.

I got connected with Dr. Adam Assoian, who runs Ally Psychological Services in Doylestown, PA. He is the EXACT type of client that I want to be working with for a bunch of different reasons. For me, advancing mental health conversations is a big passion of mine and that is all thanks to Dr. Jaime Zuckerman. She has been the only psychologist I’ve worked with in this field and we created some amazing conversations and revelations about our mental health in general.

I tell you that because after I worked with Jaime, there were some very notable people that had reached out afterwards. To my surprise, I was really turned off by most of the therapists and psychologists that I had talked to about possibly doing the same thing for them. Their goals were too focused on money & power in the space, and not really educating their audience. It just felt super gross!

Dr. Adam is barely 5 minutes away from my house. So when I read his email about growing his Instagram account with content, I was PRAYING he was “one of the good ones.” He was! We sat in his office for 2 hours in mid December, getting to know one another, and telling each other what we didn’t want out of this business relationship.

He is the perfect client for my needs right now:

1. Not a grifter or a bad actor in the mental health space
2. He understands the value of making original content for his business
3. He’s paying about $4,000 a month in Google Ads and hates doing that
4. He’s willing to let me do my job and knows that growth will not happen overnight
5. ​He’s super transparent​
6. He pays me a weekly stipend and is offering his business resources to me
7. He’s completely open to new content ideas and business strategies
8. He’s willing to let me use his office when it’s closed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
9. We both want this to work out long term

I am now sitting in his office, with a key code for 24/7 access. Adam wants to make sure that whatever I'm doing here I can expand my business while I'm helping him grow. I am looking to do some “ghost retail” shops for independent shop owners/chefs, direct to consumer companies, and lots of clothing/jewelry creators that have aspirations of owning their own shop one day. (this Forbes article from 2021 is still very relevant!)

This is where my unique background kicks in. I have been programming retail and restaurant POS systems for most of my adult life. Toast POS and many like them, allow me to make hundreds of brick and mortar pop-up retail shops in Bucks County through DoorDash and UberEats. Adam’s office will serve as the pick up location for my client's stores and I could have 3 or 4 stores running at once from his building. Since delivery services only care about you having a business address and a space to put out your products, having this kind of stability for me will have a MASSIVE amount of value for me in 2024 and beyond. I can’t wait to show you the successes, failures, and stories as we go forward with our ghost retail expedition together.

This isn't anything but passion from me. I want to keep telling you that because it's the only thing that really does drive me. Of course I'm exhausted at times, of course I'm gonna feel burnout at times, and of course there's gonna be a lot of shit I don't wanna do to get my business/content to where it needs to be. Having money be the carrot that you're chasing all of the time will not create stability, it just creates more fear a lot of the time. Get paid for what you do and make sure the money is in your account before you start working together, but ALWAYS look for a partner who wants you to succeed as much as they want their business to succeed and vice versa.

Local business owners and content creators desperately need one another right now to keep growing. What can you offer to a business that isn’t just your content? What can you offer to a content creator that doesn’t feel like a cheap pay check? The money has to be right for both of you to start building together, but the road for more followers and customers doesn’t have to be made of gold bricks. You just have to know that’s what you’re building and know you can get there together.

See you next week.

​Feel free to book some time to chat with me if you have any questions​

John Barchard | (215) 485-0975 | Texts and calls are always welcome

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