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How to Monetize Your Expertise with Multiple Streams of Income

Secure your future with multiple income streams. Learn from Dorie Clark on leveraging expertise for more revenue. Fame or wealth?…

By Ivana Taylor

Published on August 6, 2018

In This Article

from the experts

Are you scared about your future and interested in finding multiple streams of income to your business?  Dorie Clark, marketing strategist and author of Entrepreneurial You, shows you how to leverage your expertise to add additional revenue to your business.

Would you rather be famous or would you rather be rich?  Obviously, it’s best to be both, but the sad truth is that there are lots of people out there who are highly capable and good at what they do but their level revenue doesn’t reflect their level of expertise.  

How can you get your bank account to mimic your expertise and cultivate a business that rewards you emotionally, financially and intellectually?

The answer to that question comes from one basic strategy; creating multiple streams of income.  In her latest book, “The Entrepreneurial You” Dorie Clark shares her journey of adding multiple streams of income to her business.

Entrepreneurial You also comes with a terrific self-assessment that you can print and fill out.  I’ve selected some questions from the questionnaire to give you a flavor for what’s in there.

(1) List out your current income streams. What are the ways in which you currently make money (for
instance, consulting, coaching, sale of a product, providing a service such as legal work, blogging, running
an online community, professional speaking, podcasting, affiliate marketing, online courses, live
events, etc.)?

(3) How can you work to diversify your revenue? For instance, you could spend more time growing nascent
income streams, or create new ones. Take a moment to brainstorm possibilities for where you
might expand strategically, and identify the top one or two most promising ideas.

(10) What books have been written about the topic or topics you care most about? What angle did they
take? How is your perspective on the issue different or unique?

Stumped for Multiple Streams of Income Ideas — Entrepreneurial You Has you Covered

You don’t have to be a freelancer or small business owner to consider adding multiple streams of income, you just have to have a desire to leverage your expertise and add some additional dollars to your bottom line.

Clark interviewed more than 80 entrepreneurs who have added multiple streams of income to their business and their life.  One of the things I love about the book is the way it’s organized; a chapter for every idea.  So if you’re not sure where these multiple streams of income are going to come from – you’ll find a chapter for 8 good ideas:

  1. Become a coach
  2. Build a speaking practice
  3. Build a following through podcasting
  4. Blog
  5. Build a community
  6. Create online courses
  7. Develop digital products
  8. Sell other people’s products (Affiliates and Joint Ventures)

But here’s where it gets interesting.  If you’re thinking that you’re going to hear all these super success stories of how these experts made millions — you’d only be partially correct.  One of the elements of this book that I LOVE is that Clark and the people she interviewed shared even the ugly failures that came along with their successes.  Here’s one where Jared Kleinert, a young entrepreneur, shared a spectacular failure in the chapter titled “Create an Online Course

$997. $11,000. $0.
The first number represents the retail cost to sign up for a course called Yourself with Wealth that I opened registration for two weeks ago. The second number is the amount I agreed to pay (in total) to my various partners and course instructors for 10 separate hour-long interviews as well as editing for four different videos used to help sell the course. Leverage Your Platform by Creating an Online Course 151 The final number is the amount of total sales I had after the 4 day launch period. Talk about a massive failure.

After this story, you can see that Kleinert certainly knew how to connect with his experts and get their attention, but the lesson here is what do you have to do to create a demand for your online course?  The story continues…

Instead of burying his defeat and silently slinking away, he went public, sharing what he learned in his Forbes piece. “The second I published it, everyone was saying how vulnerable it was, and how transparent it was,” he says. “There’s no reason not to be vulnerable . . . I think it’s a strength. I think it attracts respect from people.”
Kleinert has moved on to other business ventures, including a new book. But he’s taken the lessons with him. “You have to build up over time,” he says. “You have to ask your customers what they want. You need to build something that’s of value to them, and scale that over time.”

And this is what makes Entrepreneurial You a book worth reading.  You won’t only get the success stories, you’ll get the lessons behind the failures of each strategy.

Who This Book is For

Entrepreneurial You is a book that is primarily written for consultants and subject matter experts who are looking for ways to add multiple streams of income to their business and who are ready to stop trading time for money.  But I’ve also realized that this is also a terrific opportunity for folks who have full-time jobs and are looking for ways to build their personal brand as well as adding some additional income.  The strategies Clark shares are all easily implemented by someone with a full-time job.

Conclusion

There is one BIG piece of advice that Clark shared with us during her video podcast interview “Take your time, add one strategy at a time.”  I can’t stress this enough.  As someone who has tried several of these strategies (unsuccessfully), I have to say that this is advice worth listening to.   Here are my tips for strategizing about adding multiple streams of income to your business:

  1. Complete Dorie Clark’s “Entrepreneurial You Worksheet”
  2. Create a list of 3 potential ways that you can create multiple streams of income.  Don’t just pick something that people say is popular, pick something that you know that you can consistently deliver on.  I was sure that because I liked sharing tips and strategies and teaching people, that developing a course would be a great fit for me.  I hated it, I struggled and I wasn’t able to sell anything.  It turns out, that I prefer building community and promoting brands.  It took me several months of struggling to learn this.  So, give yourself time, try a few things and keep working at it until you find something that works for you.
  3. Start small.  From your list of 3, select one and take one action toward its implementation.

There’s no doubt that in today’s economy, it’s good practice to put strategies in place to make sure that you and your business are as successful as you can be.