Welcome to New American Dream, our weekly email series where we learn about 3 tactics and 3 tools from Creators earning over $100,000 annually with under 100,000 followers.
Brittany Ratelle
Brittany Ratelle earns $300,000 annually with just 26,300 followers by teaching legal to Creators and entrepreneurs as The Fine Printcess, then selling services through her firm, Ratelle Law, and templates and courses through Creative Contracts.
She started as a part-time "nap time lawyer" while raising young kids. About 10 years ago, mommy bloggers kept bringing her legal questions, like sponsor contracts, that traditional attorneys didn't take seriously, so she emailed everyone in her address book introducing herself as an attorney for creative entrepreneurs.
Today her husband is her business partner, and her business supports their family, including four kids.
"I'm the sugar mama for my family."
Annual earnings per follower: $11.42
Audience Breakdown
Platform | Follower Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
23,600 | Main platform. | |
2,666 | Growing. Reaches industry execs. |
Earnings Breakdown
Income Stream | Share of Income | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Ratelle Law (legal services) | ~70% | $500/hour, but prefers flat fees. Almost 450 trademarks filed. |
Creative Contracts (templates, courses, speaking, and training) | ~30% | Templates from $30. Most sales are $200-$300. Full library: $2,000-$3,000. |
Three Tactics
The top 3 tactics Brittany uses to earn outsized income per follower:
Tactic #1: Build your offer around a problem people will actually pay to solve
If you're gonna add on skills, coaching, back end, book, podcast, services, events, all the other stuff you can do, what is the problem that your people have in your audience that they will pay to solve? There are some problems that people will whine and moan about, but they actually don't have any interest in paying and swiping a card to solve it.
Brittany likes the Japanese idea of ikigai (the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for) but points out that for building a business, what matters most is solving payment-worthy problems.
How to use it:
Go through your emails and DMs and talk to your audience - even 1:1 - to figure out what problems they are asking you to solve.
Offer to solve some of their problems for some reasonable amount of money (try sending a Stripe link) and see which ones people consistently say yes to and purchase.
Build your core offering - a service, membership, product, etc. - around those. Start with the most common one, and expand your offering as your business grows.
Tactic #2: Turn news into reels, reels into a webinar, and a webinar into calls
I use a ManyChat automation and send people to my trademark training webinar. I try to do it live every two weeks; it's a 45 minute educational workshop. At the end, I do a pitch to say, “Hey, book a call with me.”
Much of Brittany’s content points to one paid service: trademarks. Her mentor, Julie Chenell, says webinars are "working most consistently" as AI floods email and static posts. Brittany has a pretty high close rate once webinar guests then get on the call, where she covers whether the brand can be trademarked or needs a pivot.
How to use it:
React to news as it happens, and lead from it to your paid offer.
Use a ManyChat automation to automatically DM viewers a link to join a live training.
Teach for about 45 minutes, pitch a call at the end, and run it again every two weeks.
Tactic #3: Package a flat-fee service as your front door
I’ve filed almost 450 trademarks now. That's a really nice repeat offer; a lot of people come into my universe as a client because they need a trademark ... and then they “go out into orbit” and a lot of times that orbit gets a little bit shorter, right?
Brittany uses a technique that salespeople call "land and expand”, using a lower-cost flat fee service to bring clients in the door who then come back later for higher-value services like hourly-billed contract negotiations.
She calls these comet clients: they fly in, go out into orbit, and eventually return.
How to use it:
Pick a service you can systematize and repeat.
Charge a flat fee for it, and focus a lot of your content on it.
As you sign customers and deliver work on that service, make sure those customers know about the other, higher value work you do.
Bonus: Send periodic check-ins or put all your customers into a free community so you are top of mind when they have a new challenge that you can solve.
Three Tools
The three tools Brittany says she'd keep if she had to get rid of everything else:
Tool #1: Claude
Brittany runs most of her work through Claude, including business agents she built in Callan Faulkner's Automate to Accelerate course. Client files go through GC AI, a SOC 2 compliant legal tool, instead.
Please don't be running an entire contract through AI without taking out some confidential information, especially because it's likely in that contract there's a clause that says that you'll keep it confidential.
Tool #2: ManyChat
ManyChat automates Instagram DMs. It moves viewers from reel to webinar and delivers free resources fast when a topic blows up.
I just did a reel on AI use and the new watermarking, with everyone freaking out online about that. And I thought, “Hey, actually have a free tool that I'll give out. I have an AI kit!”
I was quickly able to put that into ManyChat, capture email addresses and get them to download it!
Tool #3: Wispr Flow
Wispr Flow turns speech into text anywhere you type. She talks through her client emails instead of typing them.
I talk and I type so much, sending emails every day explaining things and going over things for clients, so I love having Wispr Flow.
Our readers get 1 month of Wispr Flow Pro free with code CAN-FLOW-1M-7X2P. Paying members get 6 months free.
Our readers get Kajabi Cofounder plus 3 months of Kajabi Basic for $99. Paying members get an extended free trial. We’re also launching a strong ManyChat discount by end of year!
Learn More
You can find Brittany Ratelle and her work here:
Instagram: @brittanyratelle
Website: brittanyratelle.com
Templates: Creative Contracts
Podcast: Creative Counsel
Brittany is a Creator Access Network partner. Paying members get 30% off her Creator Legal Bundle.
The new American dream is to support your family and do it on your terms.
Thanks for reading!