We caught up with the brilliant and insightful IACOPO DI LUIGI & ALESSIA LUGOBONI a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
IACOPO DI LUIGI & ALESSIA LUGOBONI, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
Jumping into the content creation pool, many of us think it’s all splash and fun – just post, gain followers, and watch the money roll in. Alessia and I dived head-first with our YouTube channel, Lazy Dancer Tips, in 2016. We dreamt of millions of subscribers and those sweet ad revenues. Like a lot of folks, we were fueled by pure passion and a sprinkle of “let’s make a difference!”
But here’s the twist: While we were busy crafting content, platforms like YouTube were the ones truly partying with the profits. Imagine baking a massive cake and only getting a tiny slice. Yep, that’s the reality for many creators.
Now, there’s a secret ingredient to flipping this around and gain real profit to the mix: shifting followers from just being “likes” on social platforms to becoming real pals on your personal email list. Sounds simple, right? Well, there’s a bit of magic involved – a dash of marketing, a spoonful of web design, and a good blend of digital delivery skills.
Seven years and countless dance moves later, we’ve turned our channel into a pretty cool online business. And guess what? We wanted to share the recipe. That’s why we whipped up “Profitable Talents” – to help fellow creators find their own secret sauce to success. If two dance enthusiasts like us could waltz our way through, so can you!
IACOPO DI LUIGI & ALESSIA LUGOBONI, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We’re Iacopo and Alessia. Our journey began with a unique blend of Alessia’s passion for ballet and my knack for entrepreneurship. This combination led us to create our YouTube channel, Lazy Dancer Tips. As we ventured deeper into the world of content creation, we realized that passion, while essential, wasn’t the sole ingredient for success.
After more than 7 years of trial and error, we managed to crack the code on profitability on social media and now alongside our YouTube channel, we’ve built a multiple 6-figure/year business purely based on free content… and a lot of strategy.
Enter “Profitable Talents”. We started this venture with a straightforward mission: to guide talented individuals, that mostly dislike marketing and sales, in translating their skills into tangible success. We’ve been on both sides of the fence – as content creators feeling our way through the maze, and now, as coaches guiding others launching their digital products.
What’s in our toolkit? We provide that kind of coaching we craved when we started. Helping other content creators build their lead generation funnel, to grow and nurture their email list, crafting irresistible offers and making an impact for their clients and their wallets too. Passion without profit won’t last long. We want creators to be profitable as soon as possible, without having to sell their souls in the process.
One of our proudest achievements has been the transition from simply sharing our passion for dance to building a sustainable online business around it. But even more heartwarming are the success stories from our community, which continue to inspire us daily.
In essence, our message is simple: With the right guidance and a touch of determination, turning your passion into a profitable venture isn’t just a dream – it’s entirely achievable. And we’re here to help you every step of the way.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
When my wife Alessia and I decided to start this side hustle we needed it to become our main stream of income one day but we didn’t have the capital to invest into any business idea (thankfully, because we would have burned it and failed). We didn’t have resources so that got us thinking: “How do we even know if Ballet online can become a thing?”. The most obvious idea was to just start creating content online to test the interest and see if there’s an audience out there. Alessia is a fantastic coach and trainer so she decided to create videos to help “her younger self”. Keeping young ballerinas in mind, we started creating short follow-along videos to improve dance technique, body conditioning, hacks from the ballet world, etc. It took us about 4 months to get to 100 subscribers, then only 2 more to get to 1000. At the end of year 1 we gained about 9000. With our great surprise, we were NOT attracting young dancers but adults that loved ballet and decided to start dancing in adulthood. This insight made us pivot our content creation to serve our audience of adults and the whole mission of the channel changed accordingly. By understanding what our audience we were attracting and what type of content they wanted from us, allowed us to grow our youtube channel to more than 200k subscribers and counting.
Our biggest advice is to create a social media channel for your younger self. Be useful to somebody a few years behind you and once you have some feedback, tweak and pivot to do more of the things that people want from you.
Don’t get obsessed by the analytics or the algorithm, just think about serving your audience and your audience will take care of you.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Iacopo: I was a self-taught Computer Graphic Artist that MADE IT. I worked on VFX oscar winning titles like Interstellar and Hugo Cabret. But after 15+ years of career in the visual fx industry, my priorities started to shift. I used to love working 12h+/day to meet unreasonable deliveries on bigger and bigger projects. But slowly I started to realise that, even if I was paid fairly well on paper, living in an expensive city like London was draining our bank account. Yes, I had a “cool” job and, I could always brag about the latest movie I worked on with family and friends… but that only fed my ego. I wasn’t truly fulfilled and I was always concerned about finances.
Alessia: My life’s passion has always been Ballet. Since I’ve left school, I worked in some of the most incredible theatres around the world, Dancing for important companies like the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Phantom of the Opera and the West End shows.
I lived out of a suitcase for the majority of my career, fighting the Ballerina stigma of not being considered a true artist but just an employee, having to push my body to the extreme to meet the impossible demands of the job.
When I decided to start teaching ballet in London, it was either hard to find someone who hired me without a “certification” or very expensive to rent a studio. Something had to change.
In the hope of replacing our primary source of income, we created a YouTube channel to help adults enjoy the art of Ballet.
After about 17 months and 15k subscribers gained on YouTube, we launched our first digital product but we had very little response (even after all that unpaid hard work).
It took us 2 more years to figure out how to market and sell our products while remaining true to our nature: without being salesy or pushy like many other marketers out there. We now have a multiple 6-figure/year business that serves thousands of paying students from around the world who can enjoy the art of ballet without feeling the embarrassment of being judged by anyone.
We always followed our passion, never money, the same was for our online entrepreneurial journey.
We wanted to use our talent to build something to improve other people’s lives. If we learned any lessons from the past years, it is that we have to take care of our community, so that it can take care of us in return.
Thanks to our online business we can now enjoy more time off, cultivate hobbies, take care of ourselves, travel and have the time to focus on giving back all the lessons we’ve learned in our journey.
The key milestone of our journey was when we learned how to sell online, without being pushy or salesy. Our main 3 pillars are: Discovery – Nurture – Impact
Discovery: Content creation is the foundation of everything. That’s how people find us, know, like and ultimately trust us we can be their guide to achieving the results they’re after.
Nurture: Building an email list based on generosity. Giving our free resources to make our audience achieve results in advance before asking.
Impact: It’s how we craft offers tailored to our clients’ needs and invite them to work with us whenever they’re ready to commit to their results. We want to help them make the impact they want in the world by speeding up the way there.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.profitabletalents.com/ https://www.lazydancerstudio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profitabletalents https://www.instagram.com/alessia_lugoboni https://www.instagram.com/lazydancertips
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iacopodiluigi
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6_xzKt3fwqJHKxwy2ZMTpw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUN4EOchmBbZ9ZjKi9IRVQ
Image Credits
Image credits: Iacopo Di Luigi