Billy Broas – The Five Lightbulbs Method

Dear business owner,

Billy Broas here, and over the past two years, I’ve been testing my Five Lightbulbs framework with a small group of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs have great products, but struggled to market them.

A leadership coach in our program told me:

 “We know our — and our feedback tells us — that we have something special. But marketing it has been frustrating.”

As you’ll read in the stories below, our Five Lightbulbs methodology has made marketing significantly easier for these entrepreneurs, including that coach.

Today, we’re making our approach more widely available. Equipped with this new DIY training, you’ll:

There’s nothing fancy here. This isn’t about hype, big promises, or shiny objects. You’re tired of that, and so am I.

Others are tired of it too, and that’s why The Five Lightbulbs, which gives you the solid foundation you need, is growing in popularity.

But a couple years ago, I never dreamed I’d be writing you this letter.

It all started when Tiago Forte gave me a nudge

Tiago is the founder of Building a Second Brain. He started as my client, became a friend, and was even a guest at my wedding.

Over the past two years, I helped Tiago grow Building a Second Brain from a solo-operator side hustle into a seven-figure business with full-time employees.

Tiago’s audience, witnessing his success, began asking him for marketing advice. He encouraged me to teach a program.

By then, I’d been in this game a while and was growing tired of being a marketing consultant. I was exploring other career options. Plus, for this introvert, the idea of coming out from behind-the-scenes wasn’t all too exciting.

But I mustered the courage and told Tiago “Let’s do it.” I created an eight module cohort-based course and named it The Keystone Accelerator.

This is where the story gets strange…

I’ll never forget that moment sitting in my office, overlooking San Diego Bay, creating the Keystone curriculum.

Colored pencils in hand (I’m a visual thinker), I drew a bridge. Nothing unusual there. But then, an idea struck me. My hand grabbed the yellow pencil and sketched five lightbulbs over the bridge.

The Five Lightbulbs was Born

Out of the eight modules in that program, every person (except one) voted The Five Lightbulbs as their #1 favorite.

Wise people always say: “Double down on what works”.

I found myself in a position where something was working and decided to follow that advice.

I’m glad I did, because I never could have predicted the use cases for The Five Lightbulbs. Things like:

• A woman with auditory dyslexia who finally found a marketing training she could follow, thanks to The Five Lightbulbs’ visual approach
• A small business owner who has his entire team speaking the language of the Lightbulbs
• A media buyer who is using The Five Lightbulbs as a testing framework for his Google ads

But it wasn’t enough to have the framework. To be useful, I had to turn it into a methodology.

For the past two years, we’ve been refining the methodology

To recap, we’ve been using The Five Lightbulbs methodology with two groups:

1. My 1-on-1 clients
2. Participants in our cohort-based course, Keystone

We’re talking just under 100 people — a relatively small group of people. You can see some of them below.

We’ve now field-tested The Five Lightbulbs through:

• 125 breakout rooms
• 42 writing sessions
• 100 Messaging Maps

Plus, over 130 hours of me teaching on Zoom. 

After 15 years in online marketing, I’ve seen how many products are rushed to market. That’s the last thing I was about to do.

But working closely for two years with these 100 people to implement The Five Lightbulbs has paid off.