Give away your recipe

Welcome to the Thought Follower, weekly tips & insights for savvy Solopreneurs.

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I spent a day in Bordeaux last week. It’s a beautiful city, home to one of my favourite treats - a local delicacy called canelé.

My favourite canelé store is La Toque Cuivrée. They’ve scaled the humble canelé into a major operation - thousands sold across 25 locations every day. And guess what?

They publish their exact recipe online. (Grab it here if you’re interested.)

I tried making them once.

I found some canelé moulds, bought Madagascan vanilla pods, measured every ingredient to the gram & even cracked open a fresh bottle of white rum for the occasion.

The result?

• 8 were burnt beyond recognition.

• 4 got stuck in the moulds.

• 2 were technically edible.

• 4 were really good.

It simply wasn’t worth the hassle.

So when I arrived in Bordeaux last week, I skipped the experiment and walked straight into the shop.

Twelve perfect canelés. No mess, no measuring. 

Solo recipe giveaway: Jamie’s Lead Magnet Win

Jamie, a member of the Solo Breakthrough Club, published a recipe of his own (a B2B agency messaging framework) last week. Look what happened next:

No paid ads. No sales pitch. Just a delicious recipe, shared generously.

This one simple act will get Jamie in front of a new bunch of perfect-fit leads…without lifting a finger. (Find Jamie’s framework here BTW).

This is the beauty of publishing your recipe as a lead magnet.

Sure, some people might try and bake it themselves. But mostly, you’ll build credibility and attract people who want to pay for the precision, the nuance, the hands-on help.

Sharing your best recipe doesn’t devalue it. It shows people just how hard it is to do well.

Stop sitting on your IP

If you’ve been sitting on your own recipe - a framework, playbook, system, checklist, or questionnaire that’s only ever lived inside your head or behind a paywall…

This is your sign to hit publish.

You can distribute your lead magnet as:

• content (like Jamie)

• a gift in 1-1 outreach

• the Call To Action on podcasts

• an incentive to join your email newsletter

Top 3 tips for the perfect lead magnet

1. Start simple - consider the processes & frameworks you already have lying around before creating anything new

2. Respond to signals - think about the things you know clients struggle with or ask you about

3. Consider multimedia - a lead magnet could be a loom video, a PDF, a swipe file of LinkedIn posts; a bundle of previous blog posts - almost anything!

Want some help with that?

Publishing a lead magnet is just the start. Positioning it well? Turning it into clients? That’s what we do inside the Solo Breakthrough Club.

Reply to this email if you’d like more info on the next intake in May.

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