JANUARY 31, 2025

Welcome to The Tilt, the newsletter for content entrepreneurs from Tilt Publishing. Together, we’re redefining what it means to be a publisher.

Read about the latest hit from Tilt Publishing’s newest author below.

content entrepreneur spotlight

Entrepreneur Jeff Gargas Adopts Toy-Store Business Model for Highly Successful Content Business

Entrepreneur: Jeff Gargas

Biz: Teach Better Team

Tilt: Helping educators teach better and increase their impact through entrepreneurship

Primary Channel: Email (20K), Facebook (5K)

Other Channels: Instagram (5K), X (35.8K), YouTube (1.71K), LinkedIn (1.7K), blog, podcast

Time to First Dollar: 14 months

Rev Streams: Courses, membership program, professional development packages, podcast, community, mastermind program, merch

Our Favorite Actionable Advice

Use what you’ve learned: Jeff used his experience as the founder of a record label and a digital marketing agency to build and expand the Teach Better Team brand.
Possess patience: Jeff and his business partner Chad Ostrowski worked their full-time jobs and usually spent 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. creating the content for what would become the Teach Better team. It took 14 months to earn their first dollar.
Consider the Toys R Us model: Toy stores target kids (the audience) to get them to get their parents (the buyers) to purchase the toys. That’s what Jeff and Chad did – targeting teachers with free, valuable content to get them to get their school districts to buy the products.
Don’t hesitate to rebrand. Launched to teach Chad’s Grid Method, the business expanded with products, including a podcast and book, to help teachers teach better. So, they changed the business name from The GRID Method to the Teach Better Team.
Diversify to add value: Add new offerings only when your business can sustain the divided attention. For example, Jeff recently added the EDUcreator Club to help entrepreneurial teachers with their new businesses.

– Marc Maxhimer

The new releases keep rolling out at Tilt Publishing. Congratulations to Aleasha Bahr on the release of Black Sheep Sales: How To Win More Sales Without Acting Like a Douchebag! It’s a great read for entrepreneurs tired of (or never wanting to do) traditional sales tactics that rely on psychological manipulations and strong-arming.

You buy the book directly on her site (and scroll down to watch her video and see how she matched her clothing to the book).

No hashtags needed … Despite what happens with TikTok or Instagram, authors (and publishing companies) will still court book influencers in 2025. [Elle]
Adding up the words … Barrett Larkin calculates the words required for every part of a nonfiction book. [Crusade for Manliness]
Digital business … Borrowing of e-books, audiobooks, and digital mags jumped 17% year over year. Digital magazines had the biggest gain. [Publishers Weekly]

Moving money: The new $20M Substack Creator Accelerate Fund is now accepting applications. It’s designed to help creators move their paid subscribers to Substack with the promise of money and tools for publishing, community, and discovery. [Substack]
Tilt Take: No details on what size audience is needed, but if you’re already planning to move, apply.
Back office: A new company launched to help creators take care of the Boring Stuff (that’s even the name of the brand). Its star client, YouTuber Eric Decker (Airrack), says operating like a media company, not a solo creator, is a must to attract traditional media investors and brand partners. [Tubefilter]
Tilt Take: We agree on the sentiment (we know nothing about the company): You’re not doing a hobby; you’re an entrepreneur operating a business.

History-making ears: More people in the US listen to podcasts than ever before, according to The Triton Digital 2024 US Podcast report. It also finds that YouTube is the most “preferred” platform for one-third of listeners. (Just 12% prefer Apple Podcasts.) [Podnews]
Tilt Take: Another reminder to take YouTube as a podcast platform seriously!

Lead in: Instagram introduced new metrics. Among them is “view rate,” which identifies the percentage of viewers who watch the video for more than three seconds. It evaluates the metric for followers and non-followers of the account. [Instagram]
Tilt Take: When your content retains your audience, you know it’s an effective tool.

Human blues: LinkedIn’s Top Voice blue badges are no longer awarded in perpetuity. Every six months, humans at the professional platform will review the recipients and allow only those still acting as top voices to keep the badge. [Social Media Today]
Tilt Take: No biggie for those who already stay active communicating with their target audience on the platform.

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