You can turn any skill into a $100k business, even if you think it’s stupid.
All thanks to new, untapped business models that are growing like crazy right now.
It’s how Kayla Itsines went from a personal trainer to selling her fitness app for $200M.
Or how Dan Koe went from making digital art for free to earning $4.2M per year.
How did they do this?
Is it because they’re the best personal trainers and writers in the world?
Or maybe they were already rich and that’s how they got ahead?
Well, after 10 years of launching businesses with creators and entrepreneurs I realized something.
There’s actually a 3 step framework that they used to turn their skills into massive businesses.
Today I’ll explain each step of the framework so that you can use it to start monetising your skills.
But first, how do you work out which of your skills to focus on?
Step 1: Find your skill
Well, to find the best skill to turn into a business there’s 2 steps we need to go through.
First, you need to list out all the things that you’re good at, that you learnt to do or you’ve achieved.
(And before you say you’ve got no skills, that’s just not true.)
You might be good at:
- Certain subjects at school
- Painting or something creative
- A sport or activity
- Or a skill you only use while working
Everyone is good at lots of things.
So write them all down, even if you don’t think they’re valuable.
As I said, any skill can work.
Once you’ve written the list, go through and write down how good you were to start with and how good you are now.
If you have any qualifications or awards, list them out too.
Then write down everything you had to do, learn and try to get that good.
Once you’ve got your list, it’s time to rank each skill based on 3 questions:
- Which skill are you the most improved at?
- Which skill are you the most passionate about?
- Which skill was the hardest to learn?
Then, you pick the skill that overall ranks the highest.
A big transformation (going from very bad to very good) is important because it’s how you know that you have some expertise to share.
But, that doesn’t mean you have to know everything about your skill.
People generally relate best to people who are just slightly ahead of them.
For example, I don’t want to learn about business from a billionaire - their challenges aren’t the same as mine.
I want to learn from someone just ahead of me now because they’ll have recently overcome the same challenges I have at the moment.
Being passionate about your skill will make you more motivated to keep improving at it.
Finally, it being hard to learn is exactly what makes it valuable, which is essential for a business.
This skill is what we’re going to turn into a business.
But having a skill with no customers is pointless.
So that’s where the second part of the framework comes in.
Step 2: Find your people
When it comes to finding customers for your business you have to ask yourself two questions:
- Who are my ideal customers?
- How do I find them?
We’ll answer both questions, but first let’s talk about who your ideal customer is.
In business this is referred to as a target market.
Which just means a clear picture of what kind of person your customers are.
Now, when you run a business using this framework the answer is really easy.
Remember when you wrote down your transformation for your skill?
Your target market should be similar to who you were before you learnt the skill and achieved results.
Create a clear picture of what you were like then:
- What did you want to achieve?
- What were you scared of?
- What would you have paid to achieve the results more easily or quickly?
This picture helps you to understand who you're able to help help with your skill.
(Don’t worry about how you’re going to help them just yet, we’ll cover that in the 3rd part of the framework.)
Once you know who your customers are, you need to work out how to find them.
Luckily this is easier than in almost any other kind of business because of one simple fact.
You’re targeting people that were just like you in the past.
This means you can find them by using the 3 "C"s.
1st "C": Contacts
You likely have friends or colleagues that have similar interests to you.
And some of those friends will probably be in the same position you were before your transformation.
If not, their friends or relatives are probably in that position.
So, you can start to find your initial customers by reaching out to your friends and family.
Ask them if they know anyone that sounds like your target market.
If they do, get an introduction to those people because they can be your first customers.
This C alone is usually enough to start a business, but if you need even more customers, then you can use the second C.
2nd "C": Communities
As I said at the beginning of this newsletter, this business model has become much easier quite recently.
A big part of the reason for that is thanks to online communities.
You can now find thousands of online communities around different hobbies, interests and needs.
Look for groups that would appeal to your ideal customer on places like reddit, discord, Skool or even facebook groups.
Then, join those communities and start being helpful for free.
After you have a useful conversation with someone, reach out to them and tell them about what you do.
3rd "C": Content
When you create educational content around a topic, it’s like throwing out a magnet into the world.
You attract people that are exactly your target market.
That’s why I recommend that everyone starts to create content at some point.
An audience of people with the same problems as you is one of the most valuable assets you can have as a business owner.
When you create content you get to attract customers while getting real time feedback.
You can see which topics people find the most interesting and useful.
Whichever of the 3Cs you choose to use, you’ll start to understand exactly what problems your customers are facing.
And if you do it right, you’ll soon have people asking you to help them.
But how do you help them?
Well, that’s where the 3rd part of the framework comes in:
Step 3: Find the right business model
When it comes to how you help your customers, there’s 3 ways I’d recommend.
Which one you choose depends on where you’re at in your career personally and what your skill is.
The first way is the best if your skill is something that you already use for work.
Or, if it’s something that you are still relatively new to and are still learning.
For example if you’re a:
- Lawyer that’s sick of working in a big company
- Or a video editor that wants to make more money.
Then this is the model for you:
Model 1: Productized Service
This is a fancy way of saying that you’ve made a system for doing something effectively for your customers.
If you’re a lawyer, then maybe you’ve gotten really good at drafting a specific kind of contract.
Or as an editor, maybe you’ve got a system for editing YouTube videos really quickly.
Whatever it is, you can offer this as a package to potential clients.
Offer 1-3 packages that solve specific problems for your customers.
By keeping your offerings simple, you’ll be able to continually do these better and more efficiently.
(Which leads to more and more profit.)
But what if your skill is just a hobby and isn’t something you can do for someone else?
Well, in that case then I’d recommend model 2:
Model 2: Paid Community.
This is a website that people pay monthly to access to learn about your skill and to connect with other people.
You can provide training, education, news, discussion areas and live sessions.
And when done right, you can create an incredibly valuable experience for your customers.
The hardest thing about learning a new skill is having no-one to help you, encourage you or give you feedback.
This is what your paid community should aim to solve.
They’re also super easy to set up nowadays thanks to modern tools like Skool or Circle.
But I will say that if your skill is more valuable or can help someone in their career, then this isn’t the best option.
The best option in that situation is model 3:
Model 3: Live Group Education.
This model sometimes gets called coaching - but I prefer not to use that as it doesn’t really explain what you’re doing.
In this type of business you’re essentially working as a tutor.
You teach people how to learn your skill much faster and more efficiently than they would otherwise.
You can create a curriculum, tools and systems to help your customers supercharge the learning process.
Then, you can provide regular feedback so that they can stay on track.
If this option makes sense for you then it’s by far the best, as it lets you charge much more than the others.
Conclusion
Ultimately any of these models can easily scale a business to over $100k per year.
If you’ve found this useful and want to take the next step to turn your skills into a business, then click here to join the waitlist for my next accelerator cohort.
It will be 9 weeks of guided training, systems and feedback to help you do just that.
Either way, I hope you found this useful.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read this and have a great week.
- Tim