What's Inside
- What makes your superpower so valuable
- Generating lucrative income from your superpower: A list
- Write a Calling Card Book
- Publish and market your website and blog
- Training – Teach a class (online or in person)
- Create a Coaching Program
- Offer Consulting
- Freelance or Offer Product-based Services
- Book Speaking Engagements
- Promoting yourself online and offline
Here at Think Beyond Boundaries, we’re all about helping phenomenal professional women like you to discover your superpower, aka your valuable, unique, life-enhancing strengths, experiences, accomplishments and know-how that others would go out of their way to acquire.
What makes your superpower so valuable
What’s beautiful about your superpower is that it’s unique to you. Everybody’s path through life has uniquely prepared them to help others. All the things you’ve gone through, your insights, life hacks, the things you’ve been praised and rewarded for. Your passions, all of it, in fact, can be translated into a system that can deliver on a highly coveted transformational promise.
Once you identify your superpower, you’re golden.
The ability to generate the income and lifestyle you want is yours for the taking, with commitment and hustle backed by a plan.
But, you might be wondering, how does one generate life-changing income with these newfound powers?
Generating lucrative income from your superpower: A list
Below is a list of seven ways my clients earn substantial amounts of money on the side with their powers. (For some it’s a few hundred or over a thousand a month. A few others earn five figures a month).
Write a Calling Card Book
Why write a book? It’s a way to convey your expertise, to both distill your know-how and signal your expert status to the world. Most people understand what a book is, and it carries a prestige factor. This book is not your opus or memoir or a complicated textbook. It’s your system, your superpower distilled to its core essence.
Authors of books get invited to speak, to do radio, television, podcasts and more (More on these outlets below). You can even earn money from the book itself selling it directly to consumers, or through Amazon and other booksellers, although that’s not the primary way I recommend people monetize their expertise. Better to use at least one of your books as a lead magnet to attract your potential customers, and provide an accessible way for your tribe and potential clients to learn more about your approach to solving their pressing problems before committing to hire you as a coach, consultant, etc.
How to write your calling card book
If writing a book sounds like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be. You can actually write the first draft of your book in a weekend, with templates and couple of tricks of the trade. Then spend two to three weeks to edit, polish and publish it. If you want to market it on Amazon, there’s a plan you can follow to get those initial reviews to jumpstart sales. While it’s nice to get reviews and sales, or even bestseller status in a category on Amazon, there are more creative and lucrative ways to sell your book at a premium price (far more than what you get for a book on Amazon or other sites). (And yes, you can even make money off “free” books).
The bottom line is, no matter what your superpower, writing a book can be a lucrative foundation for monetizing your expertise.
Want to learn more about writing your book, fast? Get my quick start guide.
Publish and market your website and blog
You need an online address where potential clients or customers can find you. If someone finds you on YouTube or on social media or hears you speak, how can they follow up to learn more about you? They might want to learn more about you before reaching out to contact you directly.
- There are five core pages you need on your website to establish your credibility and make high-end sales.
- Use your site to sell your other products and services directly from your site.
- You can even generate passive income from your website with sponsors, affiliate links or ads.
As you can see, having a website is an essential part of your superpower monetization toolkit.
Learn more about creating your own client-getting website.
Training – Teach a class (online or in person)
You can add exercises, recordings and/or video, resources and templates, live chat and office hours and turn your book into a class, using a platform like Teachable or Thinkific to host the course on your own website (where you can charge higher amounts).
Want to go less elaborate? Package break out your book into chapters, with accompanying audio, checklists, workbook and/or homework and put it all into a zip file and sell it as a home study course on platforms like Gumroad, or on your own website with download plugins like Easy Digital Downloads.
Alternatively, you can also offer your courses or a portion of them on course marketplaces like Udemy. The downside of Udemy is that course fees are capped; however, like Amazon, it can be a great way to generate leads and bring potential audience members to your offerings.
In person classes – Mass market or Premium
In your community, you can also offer in-person classes through university extension, adult education classes at high schools or, the Learning Annex. However, you can earn a lot more by turning your in-person class into a premium workshop experience, where participants walk away with major tasks accomplished, resources, networks and more (e.g. Build your lucrative website in a weekend; Develop your six-figure business plan, etc.).
Create a Coaching Program
Coaching is like taking your course to the next level. With coaching, you can charge higher prices to clients who want to work more closely with you. While 1 on 1 coaching is a possibility (and can be great when you are just starting out, in order to truly learn what your clients are going through, tailor your program and get deep results), it is limited to the hours available in a day (like consulting).
Group coaching is another model that many swear works even better than 1 on 1 because you can create a supportive, accountable community for your clients that serve as motivation and inspiration.
If you’re intimidated by coaching, know that it doesn’t have to be complicated either. You can set up a weekly call for a set number of weeks (e.g. the number of chapters in your book) where you’ll deliver a lesson and open it up to Q&A (aka “hot seat coaching). You can tailor each week’s lessons to what your clients want by just asking them what they need help with the most. You can make it more elaborate with webinars, lessons, transcripts, the ability to have clients submit work in progress and get feedback, a forum and a group, it’s totally up to you. What makes coaching effective is that your instruction is supplemented by feedback, accountability and other forms of support. Your client is still the one who has to make the effort and do the work, but you’re with them to offer support every step of the way.
Offer Consulting
Consulting is when you use your expertise and know-how to solve specific problems for clients. It’s more hands-on than coaching, where clients are doing it all themselves. With consulting, you are either providing specific services or offering your advice or guidance on processes. You can set up your consulting to be somewhat hands off, by structuring it so that you provide the instructions and your client or their staff does the work. The key to consulting (like coaching) is being targeted in what you offer.
Freelance or Offer Product-based Services
Freelancing is like outsourcing, where you are doing specific jobs for a client like an employee would. Usually, the client dictates the terms and you perform the job to their satisfaction. This is great if your superpower includes specialized technical or service-based skills like graphic design, editing, software programming, and the like. The key to lucrative freelancing, however, is to get out of trading your hours for dollars as soon as possible and charge flat rates for a specific package of services.
How to productize your services
Come up with systems (software, vendors, outsourcers) to provide those services so that when orders come in, you can fulfill them almost like clockwork, where you are, 24/7. Instead of each order being a custom job that needs a detailed bid, clients order from a preset menu or package of services that solve a specific need. The more you can take yourself directly out of your business and it can operate without you, the more valuable your service-based business will be.
Book Speaking Engagements
This is both a way to earn money and to generate leads for your other offers. Books lend themselves to other opportunities such as invitations to speak or provide the keynote at conferences and events, or for organizations. You can be proactive about booking speaking engagements by getting listed on speakers bureaus, submitting your speaker package (with talk title, summary of talk, bio, video clips — can be links to video online) to conference organizers or directly to companies. The more prepared you are, the more professional you look and the more likely you are to get booked. Organizations are always looking for speakers so another lucrative approach, especially when getting started, is to speak for free, then upsell your books and packages at the back of the room.
Promoting yourself online and offline
There are many ways to get the word out about your superpower. As mentioned earlier, books and public speaking serve a dual role of both generating leads and serving as potential sources of income.
You can offer a sample chapter or book synopsis as a giveaway on your site in exchange for an email address in order to build an audience who will get to know, like and trust you and understand how your superpower can help them solve painful, urgent problems or desires.
Your website is essential and putting out regular content to build an audience is part of having a website that attracts customers (vs a dead, neglected page on the web). Syndicate your website content to your emails, social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), turn it into videos for YouTube or quotes for Instagram or Pinterest.
Getting involved in online communities is another way to spread the word and demonstrate your expertise. You can join forums and Q&A sites like Quora and be helpful. Help others and if the rules allow, list your website, book, courses, etc in your profile or signature.
Be available for interviews with prodcasters, radio shows, print media, magazines and more. You can also be proactive in this arena by offering media outlets ideas for shows or columms. Everyone needs content!
The list goes on and on. The possibilities are really endless once you’ve figured out your superpower and distilled it into a package (book, course, training, coaching, talk, webinar, product, service, etc.).
Where most people get tripped up is in trying to do too many things at once, or getting too caught up in the minutae or perfection vs. getting things done and out there. For others it’s not knowing the details of what to do (how to publish a book, how to get it up for sale, how to structure a course, etc.) Being held accountable to your goals and staying on track is another area I find people need help with.
However, if you have a ton of time to research how to do all the steps I’ve outline above, you have here the blueprint for a successful, lucrative knowledge-based business.
On the other hand, if you want to push the easy button, and learn how you can do all of the above in the next 60 days, grab my free guide here.