Generating revenue from your knowledge

You can absolutely make a living by selling your knowledge! You might have considered or even tried this before. Some of you might have tried and given up because you weren’t getting the revenue you hoped. I am here to urge you to read this and TRY AGAIN!! Particularly post 2020 disruptions…

The advantage of selling your knowledge is you don’t need the start up or overhead costs you would to open a business leaving you with more profits. But there is an art and science to achieving your goals. The diagram below created by Matt Church and Peter Cook demonstrates the different avenues to deliver your expertise out to your clients.

The bottom line: The more opportunities you take to deliver your service, the more people you will reach and the more revenue you will generate. You can absolutely play to your strengths but avoid putting all your energy into the area/s within your comfort zone. You don’t need to be the best in each of these areas, in fact if you apply Pareto’s 80/20 principle, being 80% successful in each area takes 5 times less effort than being 100% successful, so don’t waste your precious time on perfection!

Equally important is the way that you get your brand out to the world. When I began to establish myself, most of my focus was put towards my presence on social media. After several months, I was becoming disheartened, I hadn’t had any bookings despite having an established a reputation as an experienced transformational change consultant business and personal.  I had a strong network and had been regularly updating and interacting on social media. Upon reflection I realised that a large portion of my potential clients were not regular users of social media. So, I began to consider other avenues to get my name out to these people. Upon research I discovered that a lot of my potential clients often kept up with corporate trends through short articles, videos, and audio clips. I now regularly devote time to join podcasts, shooting videos and writing blogs and articles with notable improvements. I know have stronger interest, better revenue and importantly I am spending more time on doing what I love vs chasing the lead.

If you have a vision to sell your skills or knowledge and you have a passion for what you do, don’t stop trying, I am confident you will succeed.  Use your valuable time carefully and don’t get caught up in perfecting everything… Make a start and keep moving forward! Planning is fundamental.

My Tips to Ignite the Change !

1. Spend time on your goals and aspirations, don’t underestimate the power of alignment
2. Conduct insights on your emotional strength, don’t just do the easy stuff
3. Create curiosity, curiosity is at the heart of all change, look for ways to ignite curiosity
4. Deep dive into the options you will be amazed at the options after your curiosity step, create a plan – that you are ok to amend along the way!
5. Now… take action!  do one thing a day to take a step towards that tomorrow you envisage
6. Create a daily routine where you journal, continue to reflect and perseverance

Imagine our world where more people and business achieved their imaginable future.   That is what I am passionate about, that is where I use my skill and experience to generate value and income for myself.

I will post a blog soon about utilisation of Ferne Eliz King branded Ignite Change program along with how I use Ikigai Alignment Wheel in that journey to Ignite Change.   I do a bit of each of the above expertise wheel, I’m not the best in market at each but I make a difference to some and that ticks the box for me, and it generates an income where I spend more time doing than chasing.

 

Love Life, Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

Let’s have a 30 min free conversation and leave this call with a greater degree of curiosity and options.  If you are an inspired individual or are in an inspiring business I’d love to listen to your journey, your challenges and your aspirations. I want to know about your superpower, everyone has one! I want to turn up your curiosity dial and create options that transition to actions OR rejig your current actions to achieve your tomorrow. I want you to leave this call with inspiration for your tomorrow.

Why your blog doesn’t have to be perfect.

Do you cringe anytime someone reads your writing out loud? Does this thought sit in the back of your mind as you are blogging? (or does it stop you from blogging at all?) Blogs can be daunting, but the benefits should outweigh any uncomfortable feelings that you have about writing. For me, speaking comes more naturally than writing. When I write I tend to use too many words trying to assure my message has been conveyed loud and clear and I feel awkward when I hear people reading my words out loud. I push past all my apprehensive thoughts because blogs are a FABULOUS business tool. They are an innovative way to promote yourself or your business and even help boost your search engine ranking. The best part is they are shareable, people are more likely to share a blog they find relatable over a website which gets your brand out to more people.

Critically for me though I keep two things in mind. 1. If I help one person with my blog, whatever the topic that is a win for me and I am amazed at the comments I get from people around the world who appreciate the insights and thoughts that I put into blogs. 2. I journal every day, there is scientific proof this helps stress and I know use blogging as a mechanism to ‘use’ my journal time effectively. Once a week I write a few blogs. It helps me!

I remember the feeling of uncertainty and doubt when I began to write my first blog. I was confident with the content and would have no apprehension speaking to a group of people on the topic, but when it came to writing I had no idea where to start. Over time I developed a system to writing which I use to guide me through each blog, I don’t use it exclusively, but I refer to it to break down a blog when I am spending too much time starting at a blank page.

Know your audience
We are all targeting a different demographic of clients so before you write anything, ensure you have a clear image of your ideal client or customer in your head and write your blog as though you are speaking to them. For me, my ideal client isn’t reading my blog for entertainment. My audience are professionals who are often time poor, they dedicate as certain amount of time each week to expand their thoughts and skills outside of a standard professional development. So as much as I could spend more time adding entertainment to my writing, I know my audience aren’t going to value it as much as the direct, hard facts.

Heading
People will decide whether to read your blog based on your heading, so if there is one area to devote your creativity to, this is it! Workshop a couple of titles both before and after writing your blog. It is important to revisit the title at the end because your blog may have taken a different direction than you initially anticipate so you want the title to fit.

Image
A lot of experts discourage the use of stock photos and I understand that you need to be unique to stand out. However, I don’t have the time or energy to source or create innovative images for every blog or post I do. I prefer to use a stock image and make it unique by adding my brand colours, logo, boarders, backgrounds and graphics. This process only takes a few minutes on an application such as Canva.

Subheading
If your title and image haven’t convinced them, this is the final chance to hook them in. Use 1-2 sentences maximum describing what they will get out of reading your blog.

Body
It is a lot easier for you to write, and a lot easier for other people to read if you write the same way as you speak. Avoid long sentences, complicated words, and break up large bodies of text with subheadings. Remember blogs are supposed to be easy to read and comprehend.

Summary
Briefly summarise the main points of the article.

Call to Action
Alternate your call to action. It doesn’t always have to be ‘booking a call’ or ‘like and share’. Use the opportunity to direct them to free resources, related articles, your website or shop.

When used correctly blogs are an engaging way promote yourself and your services. Your blogs make you relatable so prospective clients will get to know, like and trust you, making them more likely to buy from you. Regular blogging is also an effective tool to boost your search engine rankings, getting more eyeballs on your offer. Write as often as you’re inspired, write the way you speak, it makes your more relatable, put the thesaurus down and just be you!

 

Love Life, Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King

Practice what you Preach

Living by your own advice enables you to be the type of person that you admire.

Giving advice is a lot easier than receiving it, even when the advice has come directly from your own mouth. People tend to give advice to lift their own self-worth and sense of importance. Being on the receiving end generally has the opposite affect, and we must decide whether we accept the advice from others. There are tips we should all follow.

When someone comes to you with a problem, take a strong look in the mirror and consider whether you have the knowledge and experience to have an opinion, and if it is advice that you follow yourself, before offering any counsel.

People often confuse hearing someone venting a frustration with asking for advice, and we are quick to jump to solution mode when sometimes all the other person wants is for someone to hear them.

We could all work on being a better listener.

When someone offers you advice in your personal life, do not be so quick to dismiss it. We are often too emotionally entwined with our own problems and it is a lot easier for others to see the big picture. You ultimately have the power of choice, and not every piece of advice is going to be right for you but take some time to self-reflect before you make that decision.

If you are a leader or manager of a corporation. Practice what you preach!

It seems so obvious but all too often I see managers who have forgotten where they have come from and forgotten their role. Your role is to lead and support, not to direct and delegate. The way you conduct yourself in the workplace will have a direct impact on how those under you will behave.

Hypocritical is unfortunately a word that describes some managers, and it is both frustrating and disrespectful to the employees who look up to them. I’m not stating that these managers have chosen to behave this way- ultimately, I believe it’s a question self-awareness. Here are some examples of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ approach to management.

The manager that:

• Disciplines employees for coming to work late, but they arrive late for most meetings
• Promotes strong customer service, only to be hostile towards a customer with a complaint themselves
• Limits coffee breaks, but takes an hour and a half for lunch most days
• Reminds employees not to spend work time on personal tasks, but then takes a 45minute personal call later that day
• Insists on continual improvement yet never seeks to develop their own professional knowledge
• Promotes teamwork and unity, but frequently puts individuals or other divisions down

As you can see some of these are quite subtle and easily things you may not notice in yourself but see clearly in other people. They are all quite common mistakes. But these mistakes can be cancerous to the overall work culture.

They good news is, owning your mistakes will restore some credit with your employees. If you begin to actively take your own advice you will begin to rebuild trust which will cause your employees to work harder and begin to take the initiative needed to grow a successful company.

So when you offer someone advice or direction, consider how the words can be applied to your own practices. There is a strong chance it is something you need to hear too!

Love Life  Love YOUR Life

Ferne Eliz King