How Jonathan Milligan Created 7 Income Streams in 12 Months from 1 Book

This is episode 33 of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience, where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. If you it's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me in this expert interview with Jonathan Milligan. Hey, Jonathan, Welcome.

Thank you, Shelley.

It's so great to have you. And I actually got introduced to you through one of my Author Audience Academy members, Rebecca Livermore. You were doing a summit and I got on your list and I was just like, I have to have him on my podcast.

So I'm so glad that this worked out and that you can share. Share what you're going to share today and we'll get into that in a little bit more. But how you created multiple products from one book, I love it, absolutely love it. I teach it repurposing all the time, and I love this real life case study. But before we really just dive in, I'd like to just share just a little bit of your bio so people kind of know a little bit about you. Jonathan is a career coach and blogger who resides in Florida with his wife. So where in Florida are you from?

I'm in Jacksonville, just northeast part of Florida.

Awesome. My sister lives in the Panhandle, so they're close to Pensacola, and we go down there multiple times a year to see my nieces and my sister and her husband. You have two kids, Kayla and Jordan, and you've been blogging since 2009. So you've been blogging a long time. That's awesome. And you spent over eight years as an executive search consultant working where he assisted Fortune 500 companies in identifying and hiring top talent. Today, he's an active writer, blogger, and personal coach. And Your website is bloggingyourpassion.com. so I am so excited for you to share in this week's Center Stage Spotlight. Just all about what you did with one of your books. And you've done an entire training on this. But just tell us a little bit about the book and then the process of, like, the headline that got my attention was, and this was a really good headline, by the way, how I created seven income streams in 12 months from one book. Love it.

Yeah, sure. So the book is designed to help people who are bloggers primarily. I've had many people tell me that it's actually more of a business book, which I totally agree. But as we have to, especially when we're writing and we're creating books, is we need to speak to a specific audience.

Yes.

And I didn't want my book to be just in there in kind of a general business category, so I wanted to be very specific. So I spoke primarily to bloggers, people who are blogging online. How do you go from a passionate idea to a full time income? And so that was the primary process of the book. But the whole idea of creating the income streams actually came out of a coaching session where I was coaching somebody else. We were sitting at a Panera Bread and he was very. Came across kind of very distracted, as many of us entrepreneurs are. We've got lots of ideas and just one idea after the next, after the next, after the next. And finally I told him, let's draw up a plan where you could take this one message that you have and, and create multiple income streams. And so I sketched it out literally on a napkin. And when I walked away that day, I thought, I need to like take my own advice.

Yes.

And I'm working on way too many projects. So instead of going wide, what if I dedicated a year to going deep with a single message and created multiple income streams? And that's where the process came about.

I love it. Have you read the book Essentialism?

I have.

He has a picture in that book where it shows the impact you can have when you have a singular focus versus the impact you have when you're spread out in all these other areas. And that's exactly what you practiced in that year was that singular focus, that singular message and the amazing impact that it could have. So I love that it was sprung out of your own coaching and on a napkin, you know. Did you take a picture of that napkin?

Yeah, I don't think I did, no. But I did a lot of different, different ideas of redrawing that process.

Since then, for sure.

So for authors who have a book that could potentially have multiple income streams, where do you think they should start in this process?

Yeah. So, you know, I primarily am helping writers, speakers and coaches. And so first I think it's good to identify what is what your gift order is in. You know, for some of us, we're writers first and that's what we need to process and to organize and to kind of figure out the step by step process of our book or whatever it might be. That's how I work. But then I've got friends who, you know, they, they're stronger in the speaking. And so they want to get out and get interactions with people and be in front of people and get feedback. And then as they get that, then they can begin to kind of put their framework together that leads to a book, that leads to an online course, that leads to many other things. So I think that's kind of the first step is kind of identifying where your strengths lie. It needs to be something that's natural for you, so don't try to be like somebody else. But for me, that's kind of where it started, was putting together a single framework that was on one page that my book concept was going to be about. And then from there, that became the chapters of my book. So then I fleshed it out in more detail and kind of walked through it. And then that led to some of the other income streams that we can talk about.

Yeah, and I love that I read on your about page on your website that you had an aha when you read the book Strength Finders 2.0. And I had the same experience about a year and a half ago. And I've been behind a computer screen doing Internet marketing since 2004, full time, since 2011. But my greatest strengths are networking and speaking.

And once I realized that, it was like, you know, the heavens opened. And that is such a key element. And it's something that I teach as well, because I saw the power of my own life. Know yourself, know your strengths, and start there. So what are some of the potential income streams that once you have that framework and you have that in place, could someone potentially create.

Yeah, so I'll share kind of my specific strategy of what I did. And again, you don't have to go in this order. Go in your own order. But for some people, they've loved having a structured approach. So for me, it started with writing the Kindle book and, you know, going into greater detail getting that Kindle book published. That was kind of income stream number one. Then I quickly repurposed that into a paperback book. Because what many Kindle authors fail to realize is that there are still lots of people who want the book in their hand. And that was something that I heard. Even though I was planning on doing a paperback, I kept getting email after email saying, I don't read on the Kindle. Are you going to make this a paperback? So I said, yes, it's coming. And so within two weeks, that became income stream number two, was to actually go through CreateSpace and get the paperback book done. Then I spent a weekend recording my audiobook with ACX.com and got the audiobook up. So literally between, you know, the matter of a month from the Kindle book release to the audiobook, I had those three income streams. And so I walked through that process. That was kind of the first step. Then what I intentionally did was about just about six to eight weeks later is when I released the next income stream. And that was an online course. For me, it was a membership site, but for a lot of people it could be an online course. And this is especially important for nonfiction authors because.

Your book often describes the what your course can teach the how.

Exactly.

And so for me, that was an important concept because I didn't want to get down into the weeds of mentioning too many tools because tools change. I wanted to try to keep my book evergreen. So I taught, you know, foundational principles of what it takes to become a full time blogger. And then if they want to learn some of the more technical hows, you know, setting up your WordPress and using the different social media and driving traffic to your site, that's where they can do the deeper dive by being a part of the membership site or the course. So that kind of distinction really helped me and it led to my best launch ever to date. Because people who got the book, it's kind of like those things of if you like the book, you're going to love the course.

Exactly. And I love that because, like, I'm immersed right now in learning webinars and I've been doing webinars for years. But that's one of the things that Amy Porterfield teaches in her course. I'm in her course, but she says teach the what on the webinar and then the how in your course. But you're doing this a similar thing, but it's with book and product. So I love that. That's such a, a great thing. And I love how you said it was your biggest launch yet because I mean, your book was the natural lead in to your course, which I don't know. Have you mentioned the title of your book yet?

Yes, the 15 success traits of pro bloggers.

Yes, 15 success traits of Pro Vloggers. I love that. I love that concept of taking the book and I don't know if you knew this, but you can also.

If your market has a demand for it, have your book translated into other languages, which that could be another, you know, another version. And I've done that with one of my books. But you know, you have the Kindle book, the print book, the audiobook, those just naturally come from one piece of content. Now you have the membership site. What came next for you?

Yeah, so next was the, you know, a little bit higher priced group coaching. So again, all of this in my mind is like it's creating a pathway of belonging for people. So they're getting the $10 book, they're getting value from it. They get into the course. The course or the membership site gives them more detail. But then there's still, you got a certain segment of your audience that still will ascend to more products and services that you can offer. And so there's a group coaching and I do it in 90 day mastermind groups every Monday. And so it's just one single call a week for me. And I let people in every 90 days. I open it up for a short period of time and so that you can allow people to even go deeper with the book because now they're working some of what you taught in the book into their own life and they're kind of being held accountable. They're with another group. And so that was one and then the next one. Income stream was actually looking at the pieces of your book that resonate with people and they are logical speaking opportunities. So I identified like three different parts of the book that were easy keynotes. For example, in the middle of my book I have the four keystone habits of pro bloggers. And that's really designed to help people who feel scattered. No, these are the only four areas that you need to be spending your time in each week to build your business. Now, the book is much greater than just those four things. But doing that as a keynote is a perfect segue to someone saying, well, I want to know what the other success traits are. Buy the book. Which leads to the course, which leads to higher price group coaching. So all these work together and then the final one is actually hosting a live event. And so I hosted a $4,000 a person workshop, a weekend workshop. We limited it to just 15 people. First in person workshop I've ever done.

Awesome.

And it was great. It was awesome because we had people in a room where we could actually work with them and help them create their own blueprint to kind of follow the same process. So that is kind of how all of them work together. And I started the process in October 2014 and, and it culminated with a live weekend workshop on October 2015.

I love it. So take us a little bit through the price points because I think it helps authors to wrap their minds around what each of the, you know, in your funnel, your Sales funnel. I call it the author audience funnel because that's, you know, I try to get authors to think beyond the book. So many times we're just so focused on the book, book, book, book. And I'm like, there's so much more. And that's why I love your story, your case study study. It's a real life example. So would you mind sharing with us? It start with a $10 book and then.

Sure. And then for me, the membership site's $30 a month or they can purchase a whole year's worth for $300. So kind of half and half people chose, you know, one of the other options and then the, the 90 day group coaching model that I primarily price between 1200 and 1500 dollars for the 90 days. And with that they get access to a weekly zoom call with all the members. I have a private slack group where we can communicate and give feedback throughout the week. And then if they really are stuck, they can do what I call rapid fire sessions where I'll jump on the phone with them for a specific problem, help them out, figure something out. So that's kind of the group coaching now. You can even go even beyond that, which I done too when I have time and offer the one on one coaching at a higher price. But that should give you a little bit of idea of kind of how I've structured things. But once you get this whole thing working, then you've got seven new income streams and they all come from a single message. So the example is I'm getting ready to go write my next book, which is a little bit different than this book. And I'm getting ready to repeat the same process. You can build multiple brands off of the same concept.

That is exciting. Are you willing to share what the new book will be about?

Sure. This is a book I've been wanting to write for a while and I've actually almost done with a book proposal. I have a traditional publisher that is really strongly interested in it. Some might be going the traditionally published route on it if things work out. But it's called the gift, what you have that the richest man can't buy. And it is a business fable where you follow the journey of a person who's in his mid, early to mid-30s. He's unhappy with his work, things aren't working out for him and he goes through this journey of discovering what his true gift is, which unlocks his potential. And it's great. I've really enjoyed writing it. My background was in career coaching, wasn't really Career coaching. I was an executive recruiter, I should say. And I had the opportunity to get to know a lot of people who were unhappy with their work. And I took some of the principles I learned during that time to kind of incorporate them into this book of how do you find that work you were meant to do?

I just got chills. Like that is awesome. I love that because that's one of the things I love seeing when people really connect with their gifts, their potential, their God given abilities and, and really allow those to shine. You know, I say it's your time to shine. And so I love that and I will be looking forward to that book and what you have coming out now. If people want to connect with you further, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Yeah. So you know, if you want to see the idea, this framework that I created or you want a little bit more on the inside of my book, you can go to bloggingyourpassion.com book but you can also find me at jonathanmilligan.com I talk a lot over on that blog on productivity, time management, using your gifts. So there's that too. And those are the two primarily places you can find me.

Awesome. This has been incredible. I think I could talk with you for hours, you know, longer. Obviously you have a whole membership site on this topic. But.

When I was introduced to this concept from your email, all of a sudden I realized this is exactly what I've done over the last year. I mean I wrote it out and I think I've had over 10 income streams that originated from my one book Procrastination of publication. I'm like, oh, so that's it. Just like it immediately gave me a framework for what I've been doing. And so I love it and I'm so excited for what you're doing. What is one take action tip that you could give to our listeners? I always like them to end with something like they can apply, they can take action with on what you shared today.

So the action tip that I'm going to give everyone is that people are waiting for you to pursue your dreams. They're waiting for you. And oftentimes we sit back and we doubt ourselves. We're unsure of what lies ahead. We don't know what God's up to in our life and we doubt our gifts. We lack confidence. We let fear kind of hold us back. But when you step out and when you have the courage to take that step, what you'll find is that you embolden other people that other people are encouraged to take that step. And keep in mind that there are people waiting for you to pursue your dreams. Like the people that I've been able to help would, may not have been helped had I not had the courage to step in and step up and pursue that. And so whatever might be holding you back right now, just remember that every single business, every single successful person that you see, it started with one single step of courage. One decision to be courageous. So be courageous, step out, and the rest will begin to unfold. And I've seen so many times, Shelly, where God has gone before me. And I could see where he knew all along where he was wanting to go. It just took me to have the faith to begin taking one step at a time.

That's so good and it's so true because.

So many times we don't see the exact path. Like when I launched Author Audience Academy last year, I didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but people have told me it, it has birthed books that they've been dreaming about for 20 years. If I would not have taken that step, they may have found someone else. They may not have. But like you said, we have a calling, we have a gift. We have those strengths that God has given to us for a purpose. So have that courage today. Step out. Check out Jonathan's websites bloggingyourpassion.com buy his book, check it out, check out his funnel because it's a really, really smart and strategic framework. Think about how you can then potentially model after that, but then have that courage, take that step. So I'm so thankful that you've joined us for this episode today and I'll see you next time. Thanks so much, Jonathan.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.