#292: Recurring Revenue — How to Start Earning Steady Paychecks Without Going Back to a Day Job

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries. So today I'd like to talk a little bit about recurring revenue and specifically how you can start shifting your business to one that earns a steady stream of paychecks so that your business becomes more predictable, more sustainable, less stressful. I find that one of the things that makes being on your own stressful and difficult to manage, this idea of not having a really good handle of what next month is going to look like or the month after that, let's face it, these days there's no such thing as job security. So it's not like, well, if I had a full time job, that would be taken care of. Sure, you may have a steady paycheck, but you have other risks there as well. We don't know. I mean, it's really like having just one client, that's it. And putting all your eggs in that basket. So that's certainly not a solution. But I think what many of us want is the predictability of income that a full time job might give us, but with freedom and flexibility of being out on your own. Certainly the up and down, unpredictable nature of freelancing can create a lot of stress. And that stress and that anxiety often leads to fear based decisions, decisions that don't serve as well, that only make matter worse. I'll give you a quick example. If your pipeline is really dry and you're starting to get really nervous, how are you going to be able to generate income next month? You might take the first opportunity that comes in, when in reality that may not be a good fit for you, but you will talk yourself into it, you will go for it and you might bring on a client who's just not a good fit at fee levels that are not worthy of you because you are worried about being able to pay the bills next month. And the big fear that I think many of us face overall when you think about all this, is not having a sustainable business burning out. Because even though you love the work and you love some of your clients, you weren't able to manage this well. You weren't able to create some consistency and some predictability in your business. So what Is the solution? Well, we're going to talk about some very practical ideas here today, but at a high level we certainly want to not eliminate, because I think that's probably not the best objective, but drastically reduce the variability of your overall income, improve the predictability of your revenue and your income. And you want with that then the ability to make smarter decisions for yourself and for your business. Decisions that are based on your values and your standards. Not on fear. Not on fear that, gosh, I need to take care of next month and whatever I will take on this client, even though I can tell that they're not a good fit and I'm already getting a really bad feeling about them, that's not where you want to be. You really want a sustainable business, something that you can run and grow for many, many years and enables you to, as we talk here all the time, earn more in less time doing work you love for better quality clients. You know, this is the way I think we all understand that. You know, this kind of predictability would make things fantastic. In fact, that would even argue that most people would rather have a lower income as an independent professional if they could have this, reduce variability and improve predictability in their income. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. This has never been about just earning the absolute most you can. This is about balancing everything out, creating a business that gives you joy, that gives you the happiness and the fulfillment you want. As long with the freedom and flexibility, of course. It's really a great place to be. I know for me, when I was able to reduce my variability and increase my predictability, so many things changed. One of the biggest things it allowed me to do in 2009 was it freed up a big part of my week to be able to write the book the Wealthy Freelancer with Steve Sloan White and Pete Savage. This is a big, big project. And had I not been able to change my business so that it was more predictable and enabled me to free up a lot of time during the week, I don't know if I would have been able to get it done. I'm sure I would have found a way, but it would have been extremely stressful and I wonder if quality of the writing would have been there. So ever since. And that's what woke me up to it. It was kind of by accident. I was able to create a situation where I could really scale back my business to about 25 hours a week or so and grow my income at the same time to very high six figure income on 25 hours a week. That freed up about 15 hours every week that I could dedicate to writing my portion of the book and then starting to build a training and coaching business with the rest of that time. Now, before you start going down this path, two things. The first is that you need to shift your thinking. And by that I mean you really need to start thinking like this. In terms of how can I create more recurring revenue in my business, you have to think like that day and night. In other words, you need to internalize this idea. You need to stop thinking one off. Made to order services all the time. So shifting from the attitude and the mindset of a craftsman, somebody who maybe would make furniture and everything is made to order, to instead shifting your thinking in your approach to somebody who sells consumable products. Somebody who sells, for instance, I always think with consumables, I think razor blades, right? It's a company that makes razor blades is in a really good spot because they're selling something that everyone is going to need all the time. There's a recurring need for it. Okay, so I'm not saying go out and sell razor blades. What I'm saying is most of us, I think, approach this business as every product is completely made to order. Every project that I work on, it's unique and it will never do anything exactly like this again. That white paper for ABC company. Sure, I may write another white paper and I probably will. But it won't be like this again. It won't be this topic. It won't be this word count. It won't be this approach. Everything changes about it. And that it might seem like it's no big deal, but if your business is solely designed to help clients with made to order custom projects, your ability to create recurring revenue is going to be highly limited. So you need to shift your thinking into how can I do this? This is the way I need to start thinking. My attitude needs to shift to one where I really want my business to be based on more and more recurring revenue seems like a very simple thing. But I have found that most people who want this aren't thinking this way all the time. They're still reverting to the made to order model. And that's really kind of what they go to automatically every single time there's an opportunity. That's the first thing. Shift your thing. And the second thing is you need to decide and commit. You have to make a clear decision that you want to run a business that's either, I should say mostly or completely based on recurring Revenue and then you have to commit to make that happen. I find that many people make the decision, but it's kind of a non committal decision. It's kind of a weak decision. Yeah, I'd like to. Instead of I must and the must needs to be accompanied with. And I will do everything in my power to make that happen. That's the commitment. I can't emphasize this enough. Again, most professionals want that kind of business, but very few have the conviction and the commitment to make it happen. It's really going to require that because you will be tested and there'll be times when you should probably walk away from an opportunity because it's not getting you any closer to the kind of business you want, but you take it anyway, again, out of fear. So listen, you got to do what you got to do. You got to keep the lights on. I'm not saying that you should say no to every opportunity that doesn't kind of fit into this box that we're going to be discussing today. But there needs to be a concerted effort to as much as possible move in that direction. So let's talk about what you could do. There are five different approaches you could take to this. You could do focus on one, you could focus on two or three, or you could focus on all of them. We'll talk a little bit more about that at the end and what makes the most sense. But I will say this, typically you're going to want to just start with one one of these ideas that you kind of just take and run with and start implementing in a very, very focused way. So the first thing I'm going to start with is the one that most people think about when the term recurring revenue comes to mind, and that's retainers. So think retainers as much as possible. If you don't currently have a client on retainer, you should have a goal. If this is method or an approach you want to take, you should set a goal to land at least one retainer client, even if it's small. Honestly, at first it doesn't really matter. You just need to start somewhere. It's important that you make this a real commitment that you're going to land some kind of retainer client, because that's what's going to start. That's going to be the spark that's going to get you on the right path. A big part of this, as you can imagine, is incorporating the retainer mindset into your prospect qualification process. So as you have a discovery call with a new prospect, as you sit down to ask them a little bit more about them and what they're looking for and how they're going to be making this decision. And you go through that whole process with them. You should have questions that will help you determine if this is someone that has a lot of potential work for you as opposed to a business or an organization that really is. You could tell that the website, they need help with that pretty much going to be it. There's really, you don't see much behind that. You don't see many other opportunities there besides that first initial project they need help with. So ask questions that will enable you to uncover the potential opportunity there. Obviously you're not going to flat out ask them, at least you know, initially, hey, well, how much do you have? For me, you can ask indirect questions that are going to get you the answer you need. The one thing I'll say about retainers is they don't have to be complicated. My suggestion would be to keep them simple. And the best, simplest approach that I have found is to make it a fixed fee based retainer. And by that I mean it's a fixed dollar amount that you charge every month and that is based on a specific scope of work. So the idea, and I've talked about this before in previous episodes, is you sit down with a client and this requires a collaborative effort. I mean, the client has to agree to sit down with you to try to figure something out here. They need to help you come up with a list of things that they would like to accomplish over the next, let's say three to six months. That's a good time period to start with. And you work with the client to do a little bit of planning. By the way, you can charge for this service. You can charge and we'll talk a little bit more about this, but you can charge to kind of do this roadmapping session with a client to help them figure out their content map for the next three to six months. And once you have that, it's never going to be a perfect plan. It's never going to be something that's fixed and will not change down the road. But you have a pretty good idea in agreement that this is probably fairly close to what needs to be accomplished. Once you have that, then you can come up, you can basically add it all up to see what you would charge for this. And you do this behind closed doors. You don't want to itemize anything for the client, client, so you add it all up. I usually use a spreadsheet for this, and then you divide the total by the number of months in which you both agree, you and the client, that you would like to accomplish this. So just to kind of give you an idea, if it's $30,000 of work according to your internal calculations and you both agree that this is going to take about six months to complete, then basically it's 30,000 divided by six. That's $5,000 a month. So it's an even $5,000 a month. And one quick tip, you want to emphasize the value of having access to you and the client, basically getting priority over other clients. That's going to be the biggest value of your retainer. So you don't really want to approach this or sell this retainer as an opportunity to get this work for less. Instead, you want to present it as a way the client can have you where you can commit to that client. You can put them on the VIP line and they're going to have the highest priority in return for their commitment to work with you over the next six months on this scope of work on all these projects. Now, there are all kinds of things you could do. I'm not going to get into all the details in terms of how you can adjust and if things change, you can do a little bit of trading with a client. Okay, well, we didn't have that on the list or, you know, we only have three and now you want a fourth one. But I can trade that for this other thing that it sounds like we're not going to get to anyway or the priorities have changed. So there's a lot of negotiation you could do once you're inside that agreement. The other thing I recommend is you agree with a client to meet once a month just to go over work completed and what's coming up over the next 30 days. So you can have a make sure that you're on track. And if adjustments need to be made, then you could do that. That takes a lot of the risk away for the client. If they can be assured that, hey, look, I will commit to you, Ed, but if things change and you know, I want to be able to get out of this agreement somehow. So you will agree to a monthly call where you can see where you are, see what's going on, look ahead for the next 30 days and there's a 30 day out. So if either party wants to get out of the contract, they can do so with a 30 day notice. That way you have time to find another client to fill that gap and then they can get, you know, some Work done before you leave. So retainers, big topic. Won't get into all the details. That's just kind of the bones of the idea. But the big thing here is you're selling access to you as a seasoned professional who can take care of these needs for them and gives you that predictability. You want to set it up in a way that you're not selling a bank of hours. Instead, you're facing it on a specific scope of work. It's a steady fee every month. The client benefits by having access to you. They know they're going to get priority. And from a budgeting standpoint, it's going to be very easy for them to figure out what they're going to spend. You know, in the example I gave you $5,000 a month. All right, so that's number one. Number two, by the way, these are in no particular order. I started with retainers because a lot of people ask me about that. And it's one of when people think recurring revenue, that's probably the first thing they think of. So I wanted to just get that one out of the way. The second one I wanted to discuss and offer here is productized services. So productized services, the best definition I've ever heard of it is it's a service that has a fixed scope of work and a fixed fee. Okay. So again, most of the time, going back to this idea of made to order work, custom projects, every project needs to be priced separately because it's going to be nuanced. There's going to be a lot of different aspects to it that you have to factor into your pricing. And it's not just length, it's complexity. It's hopefully you're factoring in value to the client to get this done and get this done right, and a number of other factors. With productized services, you take a different approach. And what you're doing is you're saying, look for this specific scope of work, here's the fee. And you could have different levels, you know, well, if you don't need all these things, then I have this other version and then this other version. So good, better, best. You could do that. But the idea is going back to. I used the example earlier of a furniture maker with productized services. You're essentially got, you know, a few different pieces and that's what's in your catalog. And people can choose, they can alter the color, they can alter, you know, a couple other small factors, but that's it. Like they can't say, well, I want a hybrid of this piece and this piece. No, that's not an option. With productized services, you're giving people a catalog and each piece may have a couple of options, but the prices are clearly defined. So that's again, fixed scope, fixed fee. And that's what fixing the scope is what enables you to fix the fee. That's what enables you to feel comfortable quoting that fee. Okay, so why productized services? Well, because once you fix both of those items, it becomes a lot easier to market them. And if you then focus some of your product type services on the types of projects that are recurring. By the way, many recurring services lend themselves to this, such as blog posts, newsletters, and other things, then you can have the best of both worlds. You have something that's predictable, it's easier to sell, it's easier to market, and many clients will prefer to work that way anyway. They just will know. It's like, okay, well, there's no mystery here. I know what it costs and I know that there's different levels. And I just pick a level after having the conversation with a writer and we decide on which level and. And then we just go with that. So a couple of examples of companies out there kind of in our space who have done a really good job of this one is case study buddy, case studybuddy.com some of you know Joel Kletke, and basically it's a recurring case study services. Now, not everything is recurring, but I believe that Joel really pushes that. Joel is not interested in bringing on a client who only needs one or two case studies. They're looking for people who have much more than that. And they kind of, my understanding is they want their recurring revenue, they want clients as they should. And I think everyone should. They want clients that are willing to have a lot they could do. They're willing to commit to some sort of schedule. I'll talk about a different flavor of this here in a minute. So that's one. Another one is Audience Ops, which is a done for you content service typically focused on blog posts and similar projects. And you know, they have, you can look at their website, audienceops.com and you see that their pricing is clearly laid out. It's like standard Light plus, I believe. And each of them has. It's a different scope, different service level, and a different price for each. Another productized service. Another way to think of them, it could be a syndicated plug and play system that you've helped develop for other clients and maybe refined over time. So let's say, for example, that you work with a lot of real estate agents and brokers and because you have a lot of experience in that industry and you've worked with a few of these and you've developed kind of a whole lead generation package for that specific audience that includes emails and lead magnets and nurturing support to follow up on not yet ready leads. And it's worked really well for a couple of clients and you've kind of refined it over time. That's something that you can now package and sell to other real estate agents or real estate brokers because it's got a track record, you're able to. It's a fixed scope and you could charge a fixed fee and there could be again different levels. But plug and play systems like that, they lend themselves to syndication, meaning the kind of intellectual property and the value is baked in to the system. And you can customize them of course for each one because they're going to have different copy inside, but the process, the different assets, they're all kind of there already. And you've created the template, so to speak. So that would be another example. I know if, for instance, if I created a series of warm emails in nine word email templates that have worked really well for me as a coaching business, I guess technically I could go out to other coaches and of course we would customize them for everybody. But I have a whole system on how you use these, which by the way, I mean that's true. I have developed these campaigns over the years and I could take that intellectual property and sell it to somebody. Not in just the intellectual property, but I could sell that and the actual deliverables. So it'd be the strategy, the execution, maybe the training on how to use all this all together. And again, plug and play. Another one that I wanted to mention and I'll put the link to this in the show notes came across a design agency by the name of Hen House and they're@hen-house.com and it's interesting because I kind of kept an eye on them. I came across of them while doing some research a few years ago and every time I check out their website they have continued to evolve in. It's very interesting how much they've evolved and this is a great example of a bunch of different proven ideas and strategies. But the one I want to kind of highlight is that the fact that they have productized their design services and in a world where there's so much competition kind of design firms out there that have staff, so they have to find a lot of Work because they got to keep the lights on, they got to keep their staff employed. They have shifted to basically offer not just design, but what they lead with is becoming or being an advisory partner for startups that are trying to get funding. And if you go to the website, you'll quickly see how different they are. And they've created different product type services. One of them is an investor pitch deck that they'll work with you on. Another one is business viability analysis. Another one is funding readiness service. And then there's a whole host of startup services that they can offer. So notice how they've taken something that's largely been commoditized, such as design. And I mean, you could say the same thing about writing. So much writing is commoditized as well, but they've kind of spun it into something different. Their hook is we work with startups that are looking to get funded. And we have several packages that include strategy, they include planning, and we will collaborate with you to then execute these strategies, including the pitch deck and funding readiness. And we'll guide you through this whole process. We've developed the expertise to do this. Design then kind of takes a backseat. We just happen to be great designers as opposed to leading with design. So you can see that there's a lot of very smart things they're doing here. But kind of coming back to our topic, you could probably see how by structuring their services this way and positioning themselves the way they have, they were able to create a lot of recurring revenue, a lot of things that they could do for a startup, not just their website. So look again with these examples, I'm trying to kind of get you out of the writing realm and kind of the pure one person freelance shop, because I think some of the best ideas are going to come from thinking outside the box, looking at other professions and trying not to. Don't get fixated on. Well, yeah, but that's not what I do. My suggestion to you would be, as you're looking around for ideas, kind of extract the core strategy or the core concept that some of these companies are leveraging. What's the lesson you can take away here? When you look at Henhouse, for example, another example, and again, we're still in this category of productized services. Could be a workshop that you create once and deliver multiple times. There's a few examples of this out there. My colleague Steve Sloan White teaches copywriting to associations and corporate clients that have a team of writers and maybe a small team, but they're not formally trained or they could use some more kind of advanced training on some copywriting topics. So Steve has a number of workshops that he's created once and then he can go out there and deliver them multiple times. Now he will customize each to every particular client, depending on what they're looking for, their needs, et cetera. But the core of it has already been created. So it's productized because again, it meets the criteria. Fixed scope and fixed fee. It's a two day workshop. It's in person or over zoom, whatever, but it covers how to do X. The objective is to help you develop this particular skill. And I believe he's got several different types of workshops he can deliver. My coaching client, Laura McPherson is another great example. So she has messaging and positioning workshops that she delivers for clients. And you know, the bones kind of the framework has already been done. Of course, the work that she does in the workshop is customized to each individual client, but she's already done the hard work of creating the stuff. And again, what's this all about? Well, it's another way to get recurring revenue. You've created it once, you can deliver this multiple times to multiple clients. So just something else to think about is workshops. It could be training, it could be branding, messaging, positioning, it could be content creation. It could be a lot of different things. Basically something that you know fairly well. And I hear some of you thinking, well, gosh, I'm not qualified to do that. You're more qualified than you think. If you've delivered this work for clients kind of behind closed doors several times, you have more knowledge and capability than you think you do. So anyway, that's the. Probably spent a little bit too much time in this category, productized services. But there's a lot of different things you could do there. So I wanted to offer different ideas and several examples, another one. And there's a little bit of overlap in this next category with some of the ones I've already shared with you. But I do want to kind of make it a separate category because it does. It's kind of a pure, simpler category and it might help you think about other ideas without kind of getting lost in the weeds. And I call it X as a service. So let me explain what I mean. X is obviously a placeholder. I got the idea a few years ago when I went to an outfit to get a massage. I went to a place called Massage Envy. They're a franchise. I believe they're all over the US Maybe even all over the world. But there's several of these Chains out there and franchises. And I went in there just to get one massage. And when I came out, they told me about their membership. And I thought it was brilliant, essentially what you do. And at the time, it was a little bit less. It's gone up in price. But the massage was, let's say, $90. Okay? If you sign up for their membership, you pay, I believe it's $60 a month, and you get a free massage. So obviously you're paying for it, but it includes a massage. So wait a minute. So if it's $90, if I come in off the street, you're saying that if I commit to you for a year, and that was the deal, like, you got to sign up for a year, 12 months, $60 a month, and a massage is included. And if I want to get more than one a month, they're discounted to. I believe it was like $50, let's say. So I'm essentially for $60. If I commit to that for a year, I can get a massage for $60 instead of $90. And here's where the lesson comes in. Obviously, that's a brilliant way of getting people to commit and to get this revenue coming in on a regular basis and make their business much more predictable. But the beauty of it is that it's forced accountability. Forced accountability. So here's what I mean. I think a lot of people know they should do something on a regular basis. In the case of massage envy, it would be to get a massage on a regular basis. But we don't do it for a number of reasons. We get busy. Maybe feels like too big of a luxury, whatever. When you commit to a year, suddenly you're saying, you know what? I haven't been doing it, I need to do it. I'm going to commit to this membership, and that's what's going to keep me accountable. Because I'm paying for this thing. I want to make sure that I use it. Now, not everybody does that, but it will encourage people to get their massage on a much more regular basis than they would without this. So what does this have to do with creative work, with writing, marketing, consulting, et cetera? All right, you probably connect the dots. Ask yourself, when I look at my clients, what are some things they know they need to do on a regular basis, but they don't do a good job of creating these pieces on a regular basis? One example might be case studies. They know they have so many success stories, so many things they could talk about, but they're not doing it. What If I presented this as a way to force that accountability, a way to make sure this gets done and we agree to, let's say a six month trial, six month commitment, and it's X dollars a month and they get one case study a month. Just as an example. Okay, so that's the whole idea of X as a service is the way you present it. It's not much different from what I've talked about already, especially with retainers. And of course it's productized service, but it's really the way you present it is forced accountability. All right, moving on. The next idea is to think agencies. Look at agencies and the potential to work with agencies. Now, not all agencies are created equal in most situations. In many situations, they don't make the best clients. They're the ones who own the client relationship and basically have to follow their lead. In many cases, you know, they're creating expectations you now have to meet. But if you position yourself well and you go after the right agencies, they could, some of them could be great clients. And I'll give you a hint. The best way to work with agencies is going to be to find agencies that have clients in your target market. So let's say your focus is enterprise software. Find agencies that have an enterprise software or a heavy tech element to them, if not 100% focused on tech. If your target market is medical devices and medical equipment, find agencies that are either completely committed to or focused in that area or that's kind of their main focus. That's where most of their clients are. The biggest mistake I see writers make with agency is they present themselves as somebody who can take overflow work from them. That's a mistake. Don't sell yourself as a warm body. Sell yourself as someone who can make them look really good to their clients. In fact, I've had several coaching clients that have taken that even one step further. Not only have they done that and been very successful, but they have become a key strategic asset for the agency. In fact, in many cases the agency. One of their selling points when they're pitching a new client is that they have you, that they have this person as one of their top writers who knows this prospect's industry very, very well or the sector of the industry so you can become a competitive advantage for that agency. So that's kind of the ideal scenario if you're going to go with agencies that you want to end up with. So match your background experience to the right agencies rather than taking that, hey, I'm a warm body who can help with overflow work, that approach is not. You're commoditizing yourself and your value. So why agencies? Well, agencies, if you didn't know, have. They tend to have a lot of work and very steady work. And if you position yourself well, you can actually earn very nice fees. May not quite be what you earn working directly with a client, but I've worked for agencies where actually I was able to get what I would charge a direct client. So don't automatically assume that that's not possible. The more specialized you are, the more specialized the agency is, the more specialized a writer or copywriter they would need. The more strategic asset you are to them, the higher the fees you can get. And because they have so much work, typically speaking here, then you're able to add the more recurring revenue to your business. All right, the final category that I wanted to present is information products. Now, when I tell people this, I get a lot of eye rolls, but really what we're talking about here is selling your intellectual property. And there's several ways of doing this, but I will say that it's not as easy as it sounds. So this is not an automatic solution to all your problems with recurring revenue. If you're looking to start selling your intellectual property and you want it to be a big part of your income and you want to do it on your own, I want you to understand that this is like starting a whole new side business, okay? It's not going to happen on its own. You don't just create a product and put it out there and suddenly everyone's buying it. Doesn't work that way. You have to create an audience. You have to create content for that audience to build your credibility. It takes time. It takes a lot of effort. Most people severely underestimate how much time, effort, patience, and grit this takes. Okay? I've been doing it since 2008, and frankly, it took a good eight or nine years before it was a safer. I wouldn't say safe, but a safer, more reliable source of income. And that's giving it pretty much everything I had. Now, a big part of that time period, I was writing for clients, so I didn't have the time or the bandwidth. But that's where most of us start. We have this other thing, and we're trying to start the side hustle. So I'm not saying all this to discourage you. I just want you to be realistic. Now, over time, it can become a very nice, steady income stream. And don't believe that the market is overcrowded. I know there Are a lot of people out there and a lot of coaches selling, you know, how to sell your products, how to sell courses. But it's not an overcrowded market, because if you can create a very well defined focus and find a specific audience for this and build your trust and credibility with them, you're going to be the obvious choice. So this is another big topic. I don't want to get into the weeds here, but I wanted to offer another idea. So you don't necessarily need to do this all on your own. You don't have to start your own website, your own newsletter, your own audience, and be on social media and do all this stuff, which, you know, again, takes a long time. If you have great intellectual property, you can also find a joint venture partner who already has that audience, and you can see if they'd be willing to partner with you on a joint venture to sell your intellectual property to their audience. They get a cut, you get a cut. So that's another method, another way you could do this. I've done this very successfully with several people, worked very, very well. And essentially, again, these are people who had methods, approaches, strategies, templates, formulas that are proven in their business and it's marketable. Like, this is stuff they could teach other people. Rather than starting from scratch, they have partnered with me and then I have marketed that course, that workshop, whatever it might be, to my audience, so they didn't have to do that from scratch. They provide the value of their intellectual property, their guidance, their advice, their education. I provide the audience, the marketing and a lot of the operational aspects of all this. Still not easy. Okay? Still not easy, no matter what. But for someone who, if you do have intellectual property that, you know, hey, this is really valuable and you'd be willing to teach others how to do this, it could be very lucrative. The other thing you could do is you could offer some of that intellectual property to potential clients, potential clients who think they want to do it themselves. So DIY prospects who say, you know, I guess I could pay you for it, but we're on a shoestring budget here and we got a couple of people who might be able to do this. They're just not. Maybe they don't know exactly how you could sell them a course, templates, do it yourself resources so they can go ahead and attempt this on their own and hopefully be successful. Or what tends to happen is they start out that way, but then they realize, oh, my gosh, this is way more than we can handle, and they come back to you anyway. Because they loved your materials. It's just that they realize that they just, just don't have the bandwidth. I call it the Home Depot effect. Because every day all over the United States, people go into a Home Depot with a high degree of ambition. They're going to retile their bathroom. They've never done this before, but how hard could it be? And they buy the tile, they buy all the equipment, they go home and they watch a bunch of YouTube videos. And about six hours in, eight hours in, they realize, I am not going to do this. This is not for me. I don't have the patience. I busted a bunch of tile, I think I broke this tool. They bring everything back to Home Depot, they try to get whatever refund they can. And then they say, point me to your contractor desk. I need to find someone who can install this tile for me. So this could be a very effective way to generate a little bit of side income and hopefully over time create recurring income for you, for people who want to do it themselves. But then it can become a front end product that basically upsells your custom services. For those who realize, you know what, this isn't for me. I need someone who can help me create this. So there you go. You get five ideas there on how you can create more recurring income or start creating recurring income. We talked about retainers, we talked about productized services, lots of ideas there. We also talked about X as a service, which is kind of a concept that incorporates elements from the first two I mentioned. We talked about agencies, but not just any agency, but being very strategic with agencies. And we talked about selling your intellectual property or basically information products. So where do you start? I suspect that if this is something that you really want to pursue, one of these ideas probably stood out for you. Give this some thought. But if that's the one that keep coming back to, then circle it. Maybe this is the one you should start with again. You want to start with one, don't try to do more than one. The next thing I would do is I would go through your numbers and figure out what percentage of your income is recurring right now. So as you look back over the last six, hopefully 12 months, look at a 12 month period, get an accurate read of what percentage of that income was recurring. And that's going to be your baseline. Then what you want to do is set a target. All right, where do I want to be a year from now? What percentage of my income do I want to be recurring? Okay, so compare where you are now. Set a goal for next Year as a percentage, I think that's a really good metric to focus on. And then I want you to set a short term target in the next 90 days. 90 days from now, where would you want to be again? Percentage wise, what percentage of your income do you want to be? Recurring monthly income. So pick one idea, look at your numbers, look where you are now. Set a target for a year, set a target for 90 days. And then one last thing. Think minimum viable product mvp. What idea could you developed quickly that's not perfect over the next 30, 60, 90 days that will help you reach or get you close to that 90 day goal that you set? Okay, what can you create quickly, simply and maybe offer to an existing client? That's typically the best way to approach this and just test it out. Even if you have to be completely honest with your client and say, look, I'm testing something, this is an experiment, would you be willing to work with me on this? And at first it's really just to kind of cut your teeth and you're not worried about making extremely profitable, you're just testing it out and see how it works. Many times with these things, you won't really learn what you need to learn until you try it out in the real world. So that would be my suggestion in terms of how you can put this to practice, how you can get started. Whatever you do get started, you really want a business that's fun, fulfilling, sustainable, and reducing the variability of your income and increasing the predictability is one of the best things you could focus on to make that happen. So that's it for today's episode. Hope you found it helpful. Would love if you got value from today's session. If you would take a minute to give me a quick star rating or honest review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast, that would mean a lot to me and it increases the probability that other people will come across this show. People who could really benefit from this material. So hope you have a great rest of the day and we'll talk again soon. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode and just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book. Earn more and less time the proven mindset, strategies and actions to prosper as a freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detailed show notes to this in all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.