How to turn your knowledge into an online business (the "THREE Cs")
- Zdraveĭte [hello in Bulgarian] My name is Sorelle Amore (gentle music) and welcome to this finance and freedom channel. One of the things that most people struggle with when it comes to making an independent income online is where and how to start monetizing and selling the information or the skillset that they have. In this video, I'm sharing how to use one of the three Cs in order to start making online income from the skillset that you have, even if you have no social media following, if you have no mailing list, and no existing audience. (lava rustling) If you're new here, make sure that you like and subscribe. It is an amazing community (gentle music) of those seeking freedom in their own lives and we put out videos every Tuesday and Thursday. We would love to have you here.
Secondly, we have an amazing newsletter that I think you would love on all things finance, freedom, global structures, and so much more. Really beautifully written. There's a link in the bio for that. And finally, we have pre-launched the sale of our online course membership on all things finance and freedom.
If you'd like to get lifetime access for a huge discount, make sure you check out the link in the bio. A few weeks ago, I posted a video on how to monetize any hobby, passion, or skill. Now, that video, I will say, it was a bit more theoretical than practical, and it was more sharing my story of how I was able to monetize a very unusual hobby, skill (chuckles) in order for it to reach a business of around $1 million. It was sharing in the background of what I chose to do on my own journey, how I was able to distinguish what was an opportunity for me to pursue and what not to pursue, what I chose to do and how I chose to monetize this opportunity when I was able to identify that this could be it.
If you haven't seen that video, there's a link here or also you can check that out in the link in the bio. In this video, I wanted to dive deeper into giving you very concrete ideas of how to make money out of your existing knowledge or skills that you have. So taking whatever you have in here, putting it out into the world, and making money from that, being rewarded for your efforts. The three ways I'm gonna talk about in this video are the three Cs: coaching, consulting, and courses.
Now, of course, there's a myriad of different ways, but let's go baby steps. Also, these things I can speak very concrete about because I've used these methods most of them myself and Leon also has used them in order to advance ourselves when it comes to financial independence. (lava rustling) The starting point (gentle music) of this entire journey is to first and foremost identify what it is that you're gonna be able to sell. Now, this depends on your skill level so far.
If you're extremely young and you're just getting started acquiring skills and knowledge, it's gonna be a little bit harder for you to identify this. I can only speak from experience on that as well, because I heard the concept quite early on that you can start teaching other people if you only have 10% extra knowledge than they do, because someone needs to hear where you have been just 10% back. And I remember hearing this and I don't necessarily Know if I fully agree with this. However, hearing that concept really did help me to think, well, it's possible. And it got me on the journey of thinking I don't have to become some Harvard professor in order to start teaching information. I just had to be quite good, advanced in some way.
And so this started me on the journey, even when I was super, super young, I started thinking this way. Which helped me because over time as I was acquiring my knowledge, I was constantly trying to identify where was my skillset really, really good that other people would benefit from. I personally can't tell you what it is that you're good at. You have to obviously identify this for yourself.
Chances are, there is something that you're better at than the average person at, meaning that you can monetize this area of life and make it work for you now. I would be very interested to find out what you think that thing is for yourself. Don't put it off.
Try to write it down in the comments below, because the sooner you get your brain thinking about the possibilities, even if you're vaguely thinking about it, the better, because if you say, "Oh, I'll do that later," most likely you won't. Then you can start using one of the three Cs that I'll be covering off in this video to your advantage. Then once you have that, you need to start focusing on what kind of a problem you are able to solve. It's not just about I have a skill.
What problem are you able to solve? So for example, are you now knowing how to learn a language a lot faster than other people? That is amazing. How did you hack that system? Are you really, really great at teaching people on how to knit a very complex pattern? Amazing. You can break it down very easily for people to follow along. That is a problem solved. Is your skillset being able to identify where someone's business isn't optimized as efficiently? Maybe where their customer service is lacking a little bit, where their structures are lagging and it's actually causing a delay in the shipment or processes or whatever else.
Are you able to help them identify that to make it easier, make it more efficient, make the company make more money? As I've always said, the greater the problem that you can solve for the most amount of people, the more wealthy you are able to become from that. Business is nothing but solving problems. All right, now let's get into the specifics of the three Cs. (lava rustling) I'm pretty certain you know what courses are. (gentle music) (chuckles) Chances are you can't open your phone or computer these days without being sold a course. Hey, I even did this at the beginning of this video.
There is a reason for this because courses work. Sometimes these are not called courses. They can be called programs or lengthy eBooks or something similar. Essentially, it is a way to provide knowledge to a person, solve a problem for them whilst they study at their own pace. I'm putting courses first because it is my favorite thing to do.
I have had great success from selling courses and I just find it to be a really powerful way to put all the information that you have for other people and break it down so well so they can study everything for themselves and really get the benefit of having all of that knowledge in one spot. There's also something pretty magical about making money while you sleep. (chuckles) I remember hearing that when I was young, that you can make money when you sleep. And I was like, "What's this about?" And courses definitely allow me to do that. One of the most magical things about selling courses is that you create the product upfront.
And then, of course, you can make some certain tweaks to it later on as the audience is asking you for more specific things or your knowledge advances, you can nurture that course platform for sure. But you create it once and then you promote it and then you promote it some more and you promote it some more and it keeps growing. And then, of course, you can multiply your success by creating multiple courses as well.
I have had four courses in my time, five. So my income essentially stacks one on top of the other as I create more courses. You also do not need to hold people's hand and guide them through everything one by one. Yes, there are customer service questions that you have to answer and attend to your customers. So yes, this is one of my favorite ways of monetizing my online skillset that I have and the knowledge that I have. However, I don't think everybody should be doing courses.
Why? Because perhaps your knowledge or your skill cannot translate into being sold into a course. Secondly, you might actually be better off coaching or consulting because you'll be able to make far more money that way. And thirdly, the market when it comes to courses is definitely a little bit more saturated. I don't think that is a reason to not pursue it.
It just means that your marketing and your niche has to be really on point. So don't let that deter you. In this video, I'm not gonna talk about how to create a course.
That is a pretty monstrous topic. There are a lot of elements that go into this, but essentially you just need to take people from A to B. Very specifically tailor the marketing of what they're gonna get on the other side, what the benefits they're gonna come away with, deliver that throughout the course, really easy to digest, really beautifully provided, following along with either written format, video format, or audio format. There's lots of different ways.
And on the end, they should be coming out with the skillset that you promised at the beginning. And make it as enjoyable of a process as possible for them. Make sure that you make it as engaging as possible. You absolutely want people to finish your course.
You don't want to just sell it and just be like, "Oh, well, no one's really doing anything with it, but I've got the money." The more you can get people through it, the more you are making a difference in their lives, which is why you get started in business in the first place. (lava rustling) So now that you've created your course, you have to get it out to the world, obviously. (gentle music)
And, of course, you can go down the paid advertising route. If you have a social media following, if you have a mailing list. But as I mentioned, I'm not gonna talk about that because I wanna make sure that I'm talking from a space as if I was just starting fresh, really brand new.
So there are a ton of different places you can list your online courses at for free oftentimes. You can put them on a platform where there are already existing clients. Say, you go to Udemy or Skillshare, two platforms that you can use in order to sell your course. Let's take Udemy for example. So you create the course, upload there, and then you set the price. Now, if someone stumbles across your course on Udemy and you didn't actually physically promote it, the client didn't buy through your particular promotion, your particular link, then Udemy will take a lot.
You end up with 37% that you are being paid from that course. So it's not a huge amount, but it's not bad for doing no promotional work. Skillshare has a different model and yes, there also you can upload your course without paying anything. Their model works on getting paid for the amount of minutes a premium member watches your content for. This can be quite a good model if your course is really exceptional and really good, and it gets onto the front pages or highly recommended, really well rated.
You have an opportunity to make pretty solid income. I actually do have a course on Skillshare. When I was partnering with Skillshare, they asked me to create a course and I get a nice trickle of income from doing literally nothing. I sent some of my audience there upfront. You don't have to do that.
If you have an exceptional course, they will find you on there because there's millions of users. And then I get the rewards for it now, which is amazing. I now do zero promotional work on that.
Now, of course, there's lots of different pages you can be using, not just Udemy or Skillshare. There's many different ones, but these two in particular, are some of the biggest search engines when it comes to online courses. I use Teachable because I have an audience already existing. So I can send people to my Teachable page where I'm selling my course and people buy from that and that's how it works.
Whereas Skillshare, Udemy, it's more of a search engine for courses, whereas Teachable, I have to do all of the promotional work and I get paid on the backend. I will throw in there, Teachable isn't the only platform. There are many different ones. I just started using this years ago and I'm sticking with it. I'm not sure if it's the best one. It's just one of the options.
I've also been informed that Teachable is now starting with Teachable Discover, which is gonna be a similar concept to the above companies that I mentioned. But it's still brand new, still a smaller search engine, which could be good because you could stand out on that platform. So by all means, why not? Jump on board. The second approach I would take if I had zero existing audience and I wanted to sell a course, would be to go to places where my customers already exist. (lava rustling) Jump onto these myriad (gentle music) of Facebook pages and start interacting with the audience.
The big thing to note is never ever go in with the attitude of hey, buy my stuff. I have a course. (mimics bell ringing) No, that's not how it works. You're gonna probably get kicked off from there. There's oftentimes no promotional posts that can be added to the Facebook group. So you wanna come from a standpoint of providing as much value to these people as possible.
Every day, maybe go in for 30 minutes or an hour and find questions that people have about certain topics and say, hey, I have the, you know, the solution to this and answer, engage, create trust between these people. Oftentimes these people might be like, "Oh wow, you're so great at teaching. Can you give me a little bit extra advice?" And at that point you might be saying, "You know, I actually teach this for a living and you can check out my information here, my Teachable course, or my Skillshare course, Udemy course. Find out more there." If it's not a Facebook page, maybe it's going to some schools that you have in the local area where they are needing and providing your services for free to be a teacher.
And then if someone wants to learn more, you can say, "Hey guys, I also have an online course if you wanna study while you're at home, you can expand your knowledge there." Maybe that's one way. Putting flyers up in a local store, your library where you're at to provide the information, the skills that you have. So think of online ways and offline ways, because sometimes now, especially in this digital world, a lot of people are neglecting the real world and not focusing on that also being an opportunity to find clients.
So think of both. Look for where the potential people could be that you need to target. Where are they hanging out online and offline and go to them and provide as much value as possible.
(lava rustling) Coaching is where (gentle music) you work one on one with people or a small group of people and you help them to improve in a specific area that they're interested in. For example, are you a complete gym junkie? You could be an online coach for either one-on-one or group trainings. Have you always had luck in dating? Maybe you can become a coach for matchmaking so that people can find love. Are you really great at playing competitive video games? You become an online coach in helping people progress in this sphere. Are you really great at certain STEM subjects like maths or science? You can become an online coach or tutor. There are really endless ways on the different areas of life that you can become a coach for.
The amazing thing is, is that you can price it and deliver it in so many different ways. So you can either do one-offs, of course, but that's a short-term client and it takes a little bit longer sometimes to acquire a short-term client. What is even better, is if you create a package for these people.
So say you charge a hundred dollars an hour to teach them maths. And then you have a 10-week block of time where you're teaching them every single week, once a week, the skills. And at the end of it, you better believe people are gonna have an amazing improvement in their skillset if you've done your job properly and they will be thrilled that they paid you that amount of money.
Personally, I have used coaches so much through my time. I have spent so much money on coaches. Oh my Lord almighty. (chuckles) Recently, actually. I was going to be speaking at an event online and I was very nervous because I haven't done this online speaking for a very long time.
I usually do YouTube videos, which is a little bit of a different game. And this was a very important opportunity for me. I really didn't wanna stumble. So I found these coaches, online coaches, five days outside of the event, and I did two coaching sessions with them. They were $750 US for 19 minutes and I did two sessions.
At the end of those two sessions, it was groundbreaking the value that they provided me with. Absolutely worth the money. I was the one that determined yes, I'm gonna pay this amount and yes, it was worth it for me. So some people might look at that and say $750 for 19 minutes, absolutely not. But to someone like myself, I absolutely see the value from that.
Furthermore, because of their way that they approach public speaking, it changed my life so much, they overdelivered so much, it was life-changing, that I enrolled in their coaching program where they have a group of people, six weeks, three times a week training for an hour at a time because it has changed my life immensely. So I have zero regrets in paying them the money because I see such enormous results in my entire life. (lava rustling) All right, so coaching is quite different, selling this than selling courses. Obviously you don't need (gentle music) to create the course and have a platform to host your coaching because it's delivered very, very differently. Once you secure your client, they pay you either through PayPal, bank transfer, credit cards, via a website, or something similar.
And then you decide with the client if it's one on one, what time is best suitable for both parties, or if it's a group session, you dictate what time it is on and then people come to you via, let's say, Zoom for example. But how do you find these clients first and foremost? Go back to the example of the Facebook group thing. The same thing can happen in this instance, but when it comes to coaching, instead of selling your courses. So keep that one in mind. There are places on Reddit, on Quora, where you're able to post articles or engage with people that are seeking certain information. So engage with those people, provide articles that are extremely valuable, and then in your bio on those profiles, on those websites, you are able to say that you are either a coach, we have courses for sale and so forth.
And then we have social media apps like Instagram. So on Instagram, Gary Vaynerchuk, he talks a lot about speaking to people in the DMS about what it is that you offer and how you can assist these people. Now, again, same thing. I wouldn't go in with saying, "Hey, I have this product. You should buy it," or, "I can be your coach, check it out." It's more about, you know, finding these people that might have interests like you.
Are you both on an arts page? And in the comment section someone expresses, "Oh my gosh, I wish I knew how to do XYZ in my portraits, but I don't," and you happen to have that skillset and that's what you coach in, message them, "Hey, I know how to do this. I saw that you have a problem with this. Can I help you out?" And then answer some questions? And then at the end, maybe be like, "Hey, by the way, I actually coach, if you're interested in this." Always go in with providing value and if people like you and they like what you're saying and how you're teaching them, they will most likely wanna continue working with you longer term. Furthermore, there are actually also online websites that you can sell your coaching through. So it is kind of similar to the Skillshare platform that I was talking about but this one's specifically for online coaching, It is called Amphy.
It's an online class and coaching platform where you can sell live classes. I have been approached by this company actually to work with them. I never have, but just showing you examples that there are websites like this.
The last way I would approach coaching and getting clients as a coach would be to upsell them from free giveaways. I am certain you have seen this in your own time. "Here, in exchange for your email, you can get this report that is going to give you 10 ways of how to be more productive in your life." If the coach is doing a great job, there is going to be so much value in that report that people are actually gonna be overwhelmed. And I know it sounds probably counter-intuitive in order to give away too much information, because then what are you gonna teach them? But as I mentioned before, if you give away people a lot of free information, they know that you're someone that can be trusted and they like you, and they wanna be coached by you. I know that I can probably get a lot of information out there for free if I just stick to it.
But I also know that it is so much easier to have a coach that can look at me and say, "Oh, you're playing the wrong string in that one. So why don't you just shift down and then it'll sound better." Whereas, of course, I can learn guitar by myself. But having a coach, you're accountable to them. So provide a lot of free value from the giveaway. And then you can upsell them into either a course or coaching or consulting.
So even if you don't have an existing audience, again, you can use the forum thing that I was talking about, Facebook groups, Facebook forums, or Quora or Reddit, give away free information, amazing value, and then give them a further report, and then once you have their email address, you can communicate with them and say, "Hey, is there anything else I can assist you with?" And then maybe you can upsell them. (lava rustling) Simply put, consulting is (gentle music) speaking with businesses more often, not clients directly, but businesses about how to improve their operations, how to increase their sales, how to improve their efficiency, decrease their costs, anything that will give businesses better results. A huge advantage of why it would be beneficial for you to do consulting is that you can make a lot more money this way, because obviously businesses oftentimes have a lot more money designated to this kind of consulting because they know that if they are able to improve some way through the consulting that their revenue will go up drastically. So let's say a business makes $1 million a year in revenue, and you have a small tweak that you can consult them with that will help them increase their profits every year by a hundred thousand dollars. That is a huge increase for this company and they are much more likely to pay big bucks for that kind of knowledge.
Alternatively, maybe you know how to make their staff more productive by 10% via weekly efficiency trainings or by teaching the staff to meditate. That would be worth a lot to that company. And the amazing thing about consulting is that there really isn't a limit as to how much you can charge a company for the services. The only ceiling is how big of a problem you can solve for the company, remembering that the bigger the problem, the more you can charge. Say that you have chosen to go down the course route and you create a course for $100, or you coach one on one for $100 an hour.
You are targeting that one person so the monetization might not be as high depending on how you execute it, versus say that you have a company that has a thousand employees with almost exact same skillset, just a different client that you're servicing, this business. It is far more valuable and it will pay a lot more. The success in this industry is most likely largely going to be directly linked to what type of skillset you have. So say you're an exceptional knitter. You might have a hard time finding a company that wants to invest in you coming in and teaching the staff how to knit. (chuckles) So oftentimes the skills that you bring as a consultant, they have to manifest in monetary gain for the company.
There has to be a very solid return on investment from these people paying you. They wanna see an increase in profits or revenues or some sort of efficiency. No, actually it always comes down to the bottom line. How are you helping them to make more money? Can't say I've done a lot of consulting myself, but Leon has. In his twenties, he was a marketing consultant for some of the world's biggest brands like Volkswagen, US Marines, and ING Bank. In some cases, he was getting paid $50,000 a month to do work with them.
I dare say finding someone, a single person, that would pay you $50,000 a month might be a little bit difficult. However, companies that are medium to large size, for them that is worth it if they know that they're gonna get immense value on the other side in terms of profit and revenue. (lava rustling) Selling consulting is not (gentle music) at all the same as selling coaching or courses.
Usually when you're selling courses or coaching, it is directed at one person. The marketing and advertising is always directed at one person. The copywriting, the video that you create on the sales page, all directed at one person.
Whereas when you're selling consulting, oftentimes it's a room full of people that are making a decision for what's best for the company. It is not one single person. And the biggest thing that you have to ask whenever you are trying to pitch to these companies is what is the problem that you are able to solve for their company? Again, the bigger the problem, the more value, the more you can charge. For some people, this is a very easy question to answer.
Let's say that you're a graphic designer and you see a company, a brand out there that has terrible graphic design work, and you know that you could improve and make a huge change and it would result in better sales for them. Or you work in marketing and you see ads pop up and you just think they're atrocious and you can do a much, much better job. These are the companies that would be perfect for you to approach in order to pitch your services to them, to show them how it's gonna help their business tremendously. For sure it is a harder slog, consulting and selling yourself to these consultants, but the reward on the other side can be really, really great. As I mentioned, you can make a lot of money, a lot more money than if you were working one on one with people. And sometimes the challenge is finding the person that is making the decisions when it comes to the money and allocating the right funds for the service that you might have on offer.
You don't wanna be sending your pitch (chuckles) to just the general inbox. Most likely it's gonna get lost and nobody's gonna read that, and that's not gonna result in any income for you. But how do you find the people that you need to talk to directly? If it's like a chief technology officer or someone really, really high up, the ones that are decision makers, they don't often broadcast their contact information online.
Well, I've got just the information for you. (chuckles) Find the person's name. This is often available on the website. Secondly, there are actually services where you can plug in that person's name into a website called hunter.io, or findthat.email.
In a lot of cases, you'd be surprised how many people's email address and sometimes even a contact phone number comes out. Otherwise you can send letters to the decision makers in that company, or you can reach out directly via the social media of these decision makers as well. The most professional way, of course, as always is email. People's social media can feel like an intrusion if you're coming to them that way, unless it's very specifically made for business purposes, then it's a different story.
But once you have that person's details, you wanna very succinctly and very professionally and very beautifully inform them of where you think you are able to benefit them greatly, where you think that there is a problem with their business operations and what you could improve, how much you think this could benefit the company, either physically in ROI or in terms of efficiency, customer service, online branding, online presence. If you've done a really great job and the person is directly looking for that kind of assistance, maybe it's an immediate yes. Maybe you'll have to send a lot of follow-up emails or get onto a phone to do a discovery call, sales pitch essentially, to tell the person on the other side, "Hey, I've got this for you. I can make these significant changes for you," and try to convince them on the phone. So obviously sales skills are really beneficial for you as well. And eventually you'll get either a yes or no from that contact.
And yes, it can be a much longer process of getting these clients. However, as I mentioned, the rewards can be significantly greater than if you're just chasing someone like a one-on-one person, coaching or course sales. The interesting thing about selling consulting services is that the beginning is by far going to be the hardest part for you, because you might not have as much proof under your belt that you can deliver what you say you can deliver.
Even if at the beginning, you want to start working with your friends' companies and businesses in order to get them results, and get testimonials from them, and then that will help you to get one of your first big clients. But once you have a big client, that's much easier to pitch to other companies and saying, "Hey, I've worked with this client, Volkswagen. I know that ING, I can make a really big change in your company. These are the results that I was able to previously provide for the other clients."
That's it, we did it, guys. Congratulations. (chuckles) Again, this is not an exhaustive list of how you can make money online and sell the knowledge or the skillset that you have, but it's the beginning introduction. So if you enjoyed, make sure you hit that like button.
And we have the presale on the course membership combo with a huge discount for lifetime access. So you can check that out, link in the bio. And I will see you in the next one. (sighs) We did it.
2021-07-31 15:56
