Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating & Selling Your Knowledge

Generating income, this is a relatively new addition to this section for me, and I'm pretty excited about it. I've never would have considered myself an expert and I still don't, because in my experience I've just been able to figure out a bunch of stuff that I know is admirable to everybody. I am firmly firmly of the belief that all of you and everybody watching and everybody honestly in the world has some sort of knowledge to share. Fortunately, nowadays there are a lot of ways to monetize that information, but that should not be the initial goal sharing the knowledge is in experience, it is an educational experience, you get better at it, you learn things about yourself, you learn things about other people and what they respond to. So have I have a few stories that I want to share that relate to this and again, I've already told you about interrupting and twenty, but if some of this resonates with you are you have a personal story. I would love to hear it when I started less doing i...

t was originally a personal journey to try to get rid of stress in the way of bringing up my time, but as with any overzealous entrepreneur, I immediately thought it could be a book, even though the nine fundamentals I'm sharing with you now were to at that point, so I thought that the best way to do that would be to teach a class on it and see how people responded to the content didn't think I'd be teaching more than one class. I just wanted to teach one and get some feedback. This is you can hear how obnoxious that sounds that I actually thought that this would work this way. I wanted to just use the one class, see what people thought, and then I kind of put that together, make a book out of it, and then go try toe push that somewhere. So at the time in the city in new york city, skill share had just sort of begun and skill shares widespread now, eh, it's, basically a platform or anybody can teach classes about anything, which is a really, really great model, and we are all here as part of creative live, which is ah, democratizing education a lot of ways, because you can watch this stuff for free. So I taught the class the first class that I ever taught was about an hour long, and it was pretty much just me going through various cool websites, including followed at cc, and people really responded to it very well, but I got some really good feedback and things that didn't relate well to people and decided to use the class again. And then I taught it again and again. And I have since taught that class twenty four times, and I became one of steel shares. Top teachers in new york city. Honestly, that is the launch that helped me create all of this because I never would have considered myself a teacher. I still think that I'm constantly learning howto share this information, but the point was that I was getting out of my own way and interacting with people on information that I was passionate about, so that should speak to everyone in one way or another. If you can get out from under the minutia and out from under the stuff that you do not want to dio, every one of you has that five percent that unique talent, that unique information you can share and whether it's to other people or two thousand other people that are interested in it. They are out there, but the key is being able to get it out there and put it out there and then hone your ability to do that. So the first. I'm going to go in that order, actually, so the first one was really online learning, so I was teaching in person and that was great on the classes were doing well and they were filling up and I'd have thirty or forty students each class and I had a fine of van you each time and it was fun, it was a lot of work and forty students in a class was making some money, of course, but there's a limit to that, and I had we had just had our first child like I didn't really want to be spending nights teaching classes I wanted to be home and doing that kind of stuff, and I also realized that in the grand scale of it for the grand scheme of it, you want to be able to scale this stuff eventually, right? So the only way that we can do this by sharing our information with as many people as possible in the quickest, easiest way that we possibly can, because just as each one of you has information to share, you never know who that person is going to be that's going to benefit the most from it or give you the best feedback. So what I'm learning there is a number of websites that will let you teach online classes, but my personal favorite is the one that I use is called you to me uh, and that's you d m y like your academy. You are the academy. And you to me, lets you put up courses for free. You can put whatever you want and they can be in the form of video. Power point, audio, text all these things you can create lessons and share that information with world. You can charge whatever you want for courses. You can make them free. You can have coupons. The whole process is managed for you. And you to me really prides itself on marketing for its students. Okay, so they work for you to market those classes. Is that a place for pre recorded videos that you put videos that you already recorded? Creative life. Okay, way our live here. So, uh, so and that's something to keep in mind. So, you know, this is it's pre recorded stuff. You're not going to get the live discussions that you're going to have people so it's very possible. If you put something up when people don't like it, you're gonna get a bunch of negative comments before you have a chance to change it. But it's a great test bed for you to be able to put up something and see if there's a response to it. And people teach all sorts of things and you know again just with virtual system there is possibly a limit to something that you could teach remotely without being will show somebody but you can certainly teach your level of looking or music or website design or graphic design whatever it might be and see how people respond you can put a multiple courses and do that so I have my article is doing course I have a bio hacking of course and I have my gmail course which you've all got the manuscript for that urine again if you buy the course so that's one part but again there's a there's an issue there you have to you know you have to either be able to record a video or audio in a possibly good way you have to be a little right maybe you have to be able to share that information and some of you are going to say you're not writers are not people who know how to do video or how to edit it or how to make it look good so podcasting is sort of the next level of that every one of you has a voice okay? And thanks to things like fiver, your voice can sound really good if you put it on even if you don't record it so well I'll give you one personal tip for recording really good audio go into a closet because the clothes absorb a lot of the sound and the audio sounds really, really good. The first several podcast that I did were recorded with my iphone uh, and I think it was you with the built in voice recorder app that I was in my closet, though, it's? Not really, but you can share that knowledge in a really interesting way, because it's free to put out a podcast on, and even if nobody listens, it's, no different than you filling out the I done this e mail at the end of the day, you get things off your chest, you could just talk to the air, you don't have to interview anybody. You could just talk about what's on your mind, because, again, if you free up that headspace, good things will come out. I promise him so you can record those things and there's a number of ways to learn howto podcast, but basically just record and start posting them somewhere. There's any number of ways to post audio clips for free, you have to go into a full podcasting system and gettinto, itunes, you don't do any of that stuff, just start somewhere, just start right, and then e books would be sort of the last component of that, and I put that as the last component, even though it's possibly one of the simplest, because writing for some people, maybe even easier than recording something, and you could do that quietly on your own in a cafe if you want. But a lot of people have a lot of trouble writing a book makes sense, especially for those people that I've seen that have right book on their to do less. So I have a different solution for e books, basically in all the outsourcing that I've ever done, the only time I can honestly tell you that there was a problem and a mistake made it happen twice for the same thing was getting a ghostwriter so ghostwriters will write on your behalf and it's it's a very legitimate business, you know, there are people who are good writers but can write in many voices if you want. And the problem with not being a good writer is I don't think that I'm a particularly good writer there's, no really distinct voice to replicate. So whereas I like to write this sort of stream of consciousness, nobody can really capture that. So the first two times I tried to get somebody to do an e book for me, I basically said, look, here's, the seven block posts and here's this podcast I did and, you know, synthesized this information into a cohesive book. Which I don't know if that was a challenge or not. But again, remember I told you that if you get a bad result from someone outsourcing something it's probably your fault and I do believe that in that case that was that was absolutely true. So the third time was the charm the third time I told the person to go through my online course where I had taken videos of myself speaking and talking the way that I naturally d'oh no script here, obviously I'm just talking from my head and that's what I did in those videos in the person went through the course and they nailed it the first time, so I have no problem telling you all that that book that you're going to get that e book down the gmail I've to tina and outsourcing is ghost written somebody took my course information, which is all my original content that I put out there in the spoken word and has turned that into a cohesive book that I never could have done in a way that would have been appealing to people to read because my limit is pretty much writing a block post that's three hundred words and then I got really bored but that's just me ah lot of people would look at that situation, say a situation and say I just can't stare that knowledge and they would give up we brainstorm a little bit I mean we have an entire group here in the room that has so much knowledge a wealth and a deep well that you can draw from I would love to hear some some places where you thought you could tap into that you know kelly's raising her hand yeah are apartment has recently been turned into a studio for you timmy class on sharepoint so learning sharepoint technology excel for seniors college grads so yeah so that's just been posted teo u to me last week so I have been living in this in this recording and the steps of going through how to do it the microphone and the process that it does take but in the end hopefully it will congratulations and you may want to consider turning into any book at some point well, that was the thing and I was told in a different creative life class that if you post something teo youtube that it doesn't automatic transcript of the text is great not great okay so that was my one video on then pull that and kind of tweak it and whatnot so I might have to get a ghostwriter e book a referral from you and it's not my I'm not sher point o r x l totally savvy by any means so yes transcription is a really funny one I just want to point that out google voice has said my name as a flower vase collie flower before so I don't know how you get there but and I love it is this transcription helpful help wolf I'm tryingto laugh yeah transfusions one of those things that can be so expensive and it depends on how many people are in the call or in their conference or whatever. But as I said on fiber, my transcriptions are my interviews on my podcast are all done by someone who is in pakistan and he charges five dollars for fifteen minutes transcription and they are not perfect I say that they're about eighty five percent of where they should be. However that is good enough on dh actually s oh, I've I've been interviewed on ben greenfield's podcasts and ben is actually gonna be doing creative live session in december, right? Shelley? Yes, december eleventh through thirteen yeah, you achieve ultimate human performance. I'm a big fan of bend so this is I think it's really cool that he's gonna be here and actually, whenever I have a fitness or medical question, I usually go to bed. So anyway ben was interviewing me and he has two kids at home and by the way, on that note ben and I are gonna be collaborating together on a sort of productivity hacks for parents e book coming out sometime next year so you can watch out for that but hey was interviewing me and it actually happened was that I was interviewing him as well but there was like a toilette that flushed in the background I had kids screaming in the background stuff and he just said to me, look, don't worry about it you know podcasts and they get what they pay for so it's true you know you're shana knowledge if some people like it some people don't it's okay but you can get it out there so I recently graduated with faa and photography and lies in grad school I had the opportunity to teach photography courses and I really enjoyed it and so I'm quite interested in um teaching opportunities outside of the university so captured that knowledge you know, instruct capture nausea and the point that I really do want to drive home here is there is a loop that you should take out of this okay, so not only can you make the video course that you can turn into an e book but then you can read the e book and turn that into a podcast and then you can also read that and improve your own teaching back to the video of course it's very circuitous in that way because it is a feedback loop so when I was doing these kinds of seminars originally it was completely off the cop obviously as I said before, I had no power point I would just talk on the first time that I saw myself in video, I was like, oh my god, like that's, I'm glad people are liking this, but that's not very good, you know? So I need to correct that, but watching two hours of video was not a reasonable way for me to do that, so I had someone transcribed the entire two hours, and I was able to read what I had said, and it makes you into an audience member for your own content it's true, so you can completely switch around roles in that way and keep making each element of it better and the other benefit to doing it this way, and having a multimedia experience is that some people like to consume their content in different ways, so I might have one person who wants to listen to me on a podcast while they're commuting while I have someone who's older and doesn't want to be watching videos on the computer that rather read any book, you know you're content, maybe apple to a very wide range of people, but you have to get it to them the way they want it. So I recently taught a creative writing course, and I knew I didn't have the time. To make it something that there was a facebook group for and people would get instant feedback and everything. So I actually ended up I had the time to make an auto responders and just sent it out that you signed up and then every monday, wednesday, friday, for three weeks, you've got your lesson and I didn't have to do anything after it was set up. They got the payment, they went in the male chimp list, and it just all went out on it down, okay, so that is an awesome one, so I just tow make clear to everyone that is male chimp is a mailing list management service that is free, actually for quite a few users, but there's, others like emma and a weber and all those, but you can create what's called a drip campaign, basically, but then you can charge for it. So with a drip campaign, somebody signs up for an email newsletter, and in some cases they pay for it, and then they get emails at a certain interval, whether it's another one after three days and I want seven days on the one after forty five days, whatever it might be, and a lot of people use that for marketing purposes that you sort of maintain touch with your audience, but you can use that for an email course. Where people get a weekly assignment or they get a new piece of content every week automatically and there's just signing up and so let me put this under this big umbrella, which is that you can make money while you sleep, so instead of having to teach a course in person for forty people and be very happy with that, but have that be the limit? You go to sleep one night, wake up in the next day and find out that thirty people took your course last night and forty five people downloaded every book, and you're spreading the knowledge in that way in a way that you never could. And you can do this while you're having it while you have a job, because you can have all these things outsource and kind of put together for you, just focus on the content and there's no risk, because most of the time it's free well, I mean it. Actually, it is free just to share that knowledge. That depends on how high level you want to get with it, but it is free to share that knowledge. So what are you possibly risking if you have those ideas, by the way, if you don't remember this gate that it ever so, make sure that those ideas are secured and safe and can build in something that you can really share. In fact, as I mentioned yesterday, there was pistachio, which lets you block directly from every note, so even if you're just start writing ideas and thoughts down and everyone that becomes your block, which you share with the world that's fine, too. But don't go into this thinking about how you can make money going to this, thinking about how you can make your content really, really good and become an authority on it, sharing it's easy, part selling it's the easy part quite honestly, if the stuff is good before we had back to the studio audience, they're a couple of interesting ideas on the web cheeseburger in paradise says, I'm going to be putting an online course together soon hopefully been saying that for the last month on resume writing, and there is another from indigo cosy who says, for years I've been making my own face and hair serums with herbs from my garden, I could teach that yeah, well, you could sell those two get on shopify, one of the easiest way to create an online store and sell things, but you can teach people how to make those that's a great example uh, so many people become like youtube stars and, you know, there's there's so many ways to share that knowledge the monetizing part honestly swear to you is the easiest part because once you build that following, build that trust and have that knowledge, because you've been able to focus on that and again, I want you to think about this really clearly, because you can't possibly hope to achieve this kind of thing unless you get rid of all the other stuff. Say that ninety five percent of things that you think that only you could do that I I have shown you other people and other things to do for you makes it so that five percent that you are so good at and on, lee, you are good at that. You can share that and actually use that to making your life better and hopefully make other people's lives better as well. And it seems to like if you use all of these tracking tools, you can sort of the five percent is right there in front of you, right? Once all that other stuff in the clutter gets out of the way, it also frees you to discover new passions because there is space for that kind of thinking and discovery. I love that. Is there a way that you discovered to figure out perhaps which media or platform worked best for getting it out there, like skill share versus you down, because I think skill shirt does online as well? Right so skill share when I started was more like the grassroots wanted it was all in person when they moved in online model and personally they're online model did not work for my content, which is a really good thing to figure out on a very quick faces because they were tryingto well there's a number of reasons but it just the way that their platform worked for it it didn't really make sense for may and quite honestly if you'll go on you to me on one on my uni courses you'll see that there really isn't a lot of discussion going on people absorbed the content I get feedback there's not a lot of discussion which is why one of the benefits nothing like creative life or this kind of live interaction is where you can get that unique value that might be even fifty percent of what you take out of it is that interaction so it does depend on the kind of content offering but again because all of these platforms are free to offer it at least you know it's free to put a podcast that it's free to block it's free to put something on you to me you can test it and see what gets the best results can you put the same on you two meet and still share or you put the same absolutely why not? You want to reach the widest audience possible I mean, my my online courses are actually on seven or eight sites now and they've been translated other languages and I don't even know some of the sights that they're on but it's the same content you know they're pulling from you to me is pulling from various places but you can try it it's really it's all about experimentation without a specific plan as I said to monetize it because if it's good people will go there and then there's all sorts of strategies you start to get into, you know, fun tracking and analytics of how money is coming in from paypal and where you're making the most money but the other thing is that you can put out one hundred drug products that are making a few bucks each per month and that adds up to something because it didn't require a lot of effort to do that just as I said with that sort of loop the enemy course was the real content and then that was turned into any book which you know that sells on its own and then the podcast is related to a lot of you sort of create that content once and then delivered in different ways then that's where all the sort of tricks come in and the fun begins but getting that knowledge out there because you've been able to clear that headspace is what I want people to gain from this so that's going to wrap up the finance section here before we go into the next section, which is the biggest one honest about wellness but two summarized really? We're talking about not only tracking your finances and knowing where spending money, knowing how to save money, knowing offers and things that you can take care of advantage of that you did not know about, but then also beginning to use everything that we've talked about and being able to get out of your own way, put out the knowledge that you're aware of and monetize it eventually, after you've really created that high, high quality content that people want, and we'll really benefit from sharing and don't by the way I should make this point as well don't ever feel like something that interests you on ly interests you you had to share it and see what happens. Honestly, so the next section we're gonna be talking about wellness, which is hugely important to me, and I'm very excited to share that information with you, and we're excited as well, we really, really are. So, you know, wellness is a pretty broad topic, though go into a little more specific so that people know what they're turning back in for, yes, absolutely so. Obviously, I come from a specific background of overcoming ellis, but that's not going to apply to everybody. What I want to help you do is get those shortcuts to eat better, sleep, better work out, better supplement better and then some bio hacking stuff to make yourself smarter, stronger, faster, all that kind of good stuff, things that I want. Teo teo. Awesome. Well, of course we have a truly global audience here. You see all these beautiful, smiling, smart, wonderful people here, but we have a wide audience out there and I'll share a few comments from them before we go to our twenty minute break. So mile high guy says, maybe bill clutters can negotiate with creative life for me. Ah, elizabeth, thank you so much for all the info which will make my days smoother and allow more time for my daughter and the craft that I love. And they're also thanking you for all of your break time moves through. I think I know who that is. And justin says I will never use email the same way again. It's truly been life changing for me, and I can definitely see action items for myself is well, so I know that.