Grow a Sustainable 6-Figure Writing Speaking Business

Let's get started. And the first thing, and I'm going to get you thinking a little bit. I chose the title to be how to grow a sustainable business, because I think the word sustainability for me, it's key. When I was thinking about what is my keyword for 2026, what is the one word, the one theme that I really want to use for my business, it's really sustainability. And the reason why is because as solopreneurs, writers, creators, It's so easy to burn out. We are always writing, creating, putting things out there. And so it's important when we create to look at things with these lenses of how can I make the most of it? How can I have a bigger impact? How can I make sure that what I'm creating today has longevity and not just a piece of content that dies after 24 hours or 48 hours if we're lucky? So that's my word for this year. And I like to ask you to think and reflect, what is one word that you want to use for this year as your filter? And what I mean by it, in my case, when I think about my business, the lenses that I want to use and the filter that I want to use, is this sustainable? How can it be more sustainable? If I create, if I launch a book, for example, how can I maybe turn it into a keynote that I can sell to corporates or perhaps a course? So that's what I mean by ecosystem is how you can have the different pieces of your digital world connect so that you can reach more people. You can make more money. You can make a bigger impact. So that's what I mean. And so for me, my word is sustainability. And the answer to that is that ecosystem. And so now instead of just about the mindset, and we could talk about so many things, right? But there are a few mental frameworks that really help me to move forward with my creative business. The first is the standard growth mindset. And what I mean by this is when I look back at when I started 3 years ago, I didn't have the same skills. I didn't have the same experience. I hadn't made those mistakes. All of this is what I mean by growth mindset. So think about skills that you can develop. Think about new experiences that you can go for. I can tell you 3 years ago, I had never done a live. I never thought I would do a live. I thought I would be mortified, which I am a little bit. I never thought I would create courses. I would go on stages to speak in public. And so that's what I mean by a growth mindset. It's not going to be pretty at the beginning. My first live session wasn't very pretty. My first webinar was a disaster. The client did not hire me again. So that's part of the growth mindset is saying, hey, growth is uncomfortable. And if we're feeling too comfortable, if we're feeling that things are easy, it's probably time to go to a bigger room, to a different room. So always try to challenge yourself with this growth mindset of what can I do next? How can I stretch myself? What is a skill that I don't have? Whether it's AI, whether it's speaking in public, whether it's starting to develop digital products, for example. Second is abundance. And I really mean this. In the digital world, it's so important to think in terms of abundance. And what I mean first is abundance towards others, giving to others. I've learned that my best competitors actually are the ones who become my collaborators. We're also talking about how to collaborate. So collaborating with others, that's what I mean by abundance mindset. The pie is big. And if it's not big, we make it bigger together. So a question for you, what type of collaborations can you do this year? Who are some people perhaps in a similar space that you could reach out and start connecting and say, hey, do we have an opportunity to do a joint webinar? I've done joint live sessions, co-authored 2 books. I've spoken in webinars with different creators, done interviews every month in the Lemon Tree Mindset. I have a couple of guests that I invite to my publication, my paid subscribers, to give them exposure and visibility. And it really is a win-win. So that's what I mean by abundance. Abundance equals collaboration equals joy. So yes, abundance towards others, but also abundance towards yourself. And this is a reality that I think hits Most people, when we start, we tend to have a bit of a scarcity mindset. Our prices are very low. We don't think that we're good enough to maybe go on a stage or share our story. And we have to reset and have this abundance mindset that your story has value, that your voice, even if you have an accent like me, is a voice that deserves to be heard, that whatever it is that you're offering really has value. And this is going to be really important because unlike in the corporate world where you sign up and you get your salary, here you're really the one who is defining your salary. And you really have to have that conviction that your course has value, that your coaching has value. As women in particular, we tend to give so much for free and giving for free is great, but if it's intentional, we also have to know when and how we set our bars and setting our prices. And so that's what I mean by having an abundance mindset also towards ourselves and not limiting ourselves in $5 ebooks. I've been there. Doesn't take us very far. And the third mindset, so I've talked about growth mindset, abundance mindset, is a winner's mindset. And it's so important to have a winner's mindset because when we start, we're just going to see like these tiny little steps of progress. And someone next to you might have 20,000 subscribers, or they might be having much more traction and much more success. It's really important to stay on your lane and to stay focused. And really celebrate the little wins. If it's your first live session and 5 people show up, amazing. I know that in my first webinar, I only had 4 or 5 people. I was ready to have no one show up. So the fact that 5 people did show up, it was a reason for celebration. So don't wait to celebrate. And in fact, it's one of the big mantras that I have in my life is be your best ambassador, because if you're not supporting yourself, then it's going to be very hard to find the people who will. So start with that. And I think this mental framework can really help us for today's session. So what I'd like to do is to share a little bit about my journey from 0 to 3 years. So these 36 months, I'm going to try to take you through this sprint in a very open way to understand what the journey was like, how I've been creating my own ecosystem, because I think it's important also to know that everyone's journey is going to be different based on your previous experience, based on your skills. Based on what you like doing, based on your personal circumstances as well. It's going to be very different if you're doing this full-time versus if you have a full-time job and you have kids and you're looking after your parents and you only have limited hours. So very important, take this just as reference. This is my story. And then from there, what I would like to do that I think is going to be relevant for hopefully most of you is to share some frameworks, to share some specific how-to actionable steps that can really help you. your journey. So let's get started. So what happened in the 0 to 36 months? And I posted a note this morning that kind of made me laugh because basically the way that I summarize it is like this. The first 0 to 12 months, nothing happened. And so when people say, yes, I have this formula for making all this money after 6 months, I'm sorry, but I don't. For me, 0 to 12, nothing really happened. I was trying to figure things out. I was trying to grow my community. I was trying to learn, develop new skills. So nothing happened. And I want to be very vulnerable here because it's important to know that for many people, you're not going to have this fast road to monetization. I think we have to be kind and graceful to ourselves, and it is a journey. So a lot of things happen in the background, but really there was not much that happened in terms of results. Then from 12 to 18 months, So something started to happen. I started to have some traction. I started to have some growth. And then it's only from 18 months to 36 that everything happened. So this is a little bit the creator's life, like nothing happened and one day everything happened. So what do I mean by this? And I'm going to go from the very beginning. So we're going to go back to February 2023. And I had been doing a little bit of writing on Medium for a couple of months, nothing much, a bit on LinkedIn. I decided to self-publish this, my first book. I had no idea what I was doing. I learned about self-publishing and I published this book. Didn't sell a lot of copies because I realized that I didn't have a community. So one week after I launched this book, you'll see that the name is exactly the same name as my Substack, The Lemon Tree Mindset. I realized that the most important piece for any creator is to have your own community strategy. So depending on where you are in your journey, you might already have a strategy or you might not. Either way, I do suggest that it's important to zoom out a bit and think of what is your strategy and ask yourself very simple questions such as, who are you writing for? What is your vision? Who do you want to help? And how are you going to help that person with that transformation? And these very simple questions actually were very difficult to answer. But once I did, once I realized that my goal was really to focus on helping people who were on a similar journey, who wanted to write books, who wanted to start online, who wanted to be a solopreneur, in my case, a mompreneur, then that gave me a very clear direction on where I wanted to go. So I think these questions can really help you as you continue to craft your digital business. And so in that second year, a lot of things started to happen. I started to grow very fast on Substack once I had this very clear vision. And once I changed the focus from, I want to grow to I want to serve. If you change that mindset, it's amazing how much clarity you have because it's no longer about you or your metrics or your growth. It's about the other person and how you can help them, how you can really put yourself in their shoes and know what they need. In fact, when I was developing the content for this session, I was really trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who is in that journey, perhaps starting the solopreneur journey, or maybe you're a year into it. You're feeling a bit stuck. And so I thought, what would this person need? Probably some motivation, but also some frameworks, something more inspirational, but also something very practical. So that's what I mean by serving, not so much about you, more about the person on the other side. And so with this growth, then I started to see the results. I became a Substack bestseller around the mid of 2024. So a year and a half into this journey, then I had my first publisher deal, which was an indie publisher for this book. The Flight Home, which is more my memoir talking about growing up in different countries, talk about values and self-discovery and so on. And so things started to happen. And that's when I realized that very often as creators, we focus so much on writing, but we have so much more opportunity to start looking bigger. And so I started also to speak on small podcasts. I started to pitch myself to different creators who had their own YouTube channels, colleagues or peers who were already having their podcast, for example. And that helped me reach newer communities, get exposure to different audiences, develop a new skill, because as I was saying before, you can develop your own stack of skills, your own ecosystem of skills. And the more skills you have, the more you can leverage those for developing your business. So that was the second year, started to think bigger. And then what I realized as well is that when you already have a skill, you can think on how you can transfer it. So for example, if you're already writing about a specific topic, you already have that skill, whether it's productivity, perhaps you're a guru of productivity, Notion systems, and so on. You can then turn that into a coaching service, for example. Which is what I did in my case for creators and solopreneurs. And so from only writing, I then went to, I'm also speaking and I'm also coaching. And so that's how slowly the business started. So a question for you, what is a skill that you currently have that you can think on how you can transfer it to someone else? Not only through the writing, perhaps is starting to develop your own courses, maybe ebooks. Perhaps is coaching. So think about skills that you already possess and what is a system that you could create to pass them to somebody else. So that was year 2. It was really focusing on how to go more from a hobby to a business in a much more strategic way where the pieces start to connect. Substack was always the base of everything that I've been building. And one thing that's very important, I hear a lot of people focus so much on monetization on Substack and how to gain paid subscribers. And honestly, the most interesting and profitable part of Substack is actually the community. It's not so much about the paid aspect of it. It's great. It's a nice bonus. You have the monetization there, but once you have that community, it allows you to have future students for your courses, future clients for your coaching sessions, future members of your webinars. And that's where I think it's really interesting again. Zoom out a little bit. And instead of just having this tunnel vision of, I want to get paid subscribers on Substack, how can we think bigger and how can we start to create this ecosystem that goes beyond paid subscriptions so that we have different formats, we have different income streams, we even have passive, which is so important. So that was the year 2 for me. And then year 3, which was 2025, that's when I say that everything happened. In reality, everything was happening in the background, but the reality is that very often a lot of the things that you're working on today, you're only going to see the results in perhaps a year or 2 years. And so if you're not seeing the results yet, please stick there because so many people quit before and it's a little bit like investing. You're not going to see the results straight away, but if you keep going, chances are you will. So what happened in year 3? So the very first thing that I'm super proud of is that I published my first book. With the Big 5, with Penguin Random House. And so that happened in early 2025. And so as an author, that really helped me take my author brand and my career to the next level. So that opened new opportunities like speaking in literary festivals. For example, I went to Singapore, I went to India, to Kerala, to a literary festival in the south. I also spoke at the Hong Kong Literary Festival. But what people don't see is that behind this book, I had already published 3 books. I had a lot of rejection. I had sent, I don't know how many pitches to publishers. So that's what I mean by in one day everything happens. In the meantime, you've done all this work in the background. So that's in terms of authoring books. Then what I started doing this year as well, I started to think I have all this writing that is sitting there that dies after just a couple of days. What can I do about it? And so I started to repurpose or consolidate some of my work and repurpose it into different products, particularly digital products. I already had a couple of ebooks and I started to explore courses because I realized that so many people, they're maybe not ready to become a paid subscriber and that's fine, but maybe they want a course. That's their preferred way of learning. And so I started exploring. Mini courses. I've done them on Gumroad. Actually, one of my members here, Anne Fernie, is the king of Gumroad if you need help with that. And it was a great way, and I encourage you to do this. Look at the content that you already have. How can you repurpose it? So bundle it together. You can repackage it, whether your topic is, it doesn't matter. It might be building confidence. It might be women empowerment. It might be fitness. You can bundle the content that you already have. In a logical way and turn it into perhaps it's a digital book, perhaps it's a course. So launched my first digital course on Gumroad and I loved the experience. I'm not affiliated with Gumroad, but it was easy. I was able to be self-sufficient, update it on the go. I set up affiliates. So some of my members are now affiliates and it was amazing because I published this product. That started to generate money while I was doing other things. And so that was one of the things that I started doing is instead of just creating work in an active way is also think, how can I invest in something that can continue to generate income while I'm doing something else? In fact, I liked the experience so much that after my first digital course that is called How to Win on Substack, the results were pretty good. So I decided to do the same in Spanish. I have another Substack called Which is a translation for lemon tree in Spanish. So I did the Spanish course. Then I published a public speaking course on how to speak to scale. So that was my third course. And then I published a fourth course, which is to help people create their own digital courses. And so that's what I mean by scaling. Once I had a system that worked, once I knew how to do my courses, you can call them mini courses, it was much easier to replicate. And so Think back to your content. If you're always talking about the same topics, there's a chance that instead of just publishing newsletters, you can be more strategic about it. You can see how those pieces of content connect and you can turn it into something else, whether it's an ebook, whether it's a cohort, it might be a webinar. You have so many ways of repurposing what you are already doing, but it's very important to try to think in terms of longevity and my key word, Sustainability, how to make your content more sustainable. This was year 3 in terms of what I've been doing as a creator, in terms of book publishing, in terms of creating digital products. I also launched my first cohort because, and this is very relevant for coaches, if you are already doing a lot of one-to-ones, you know how both rewarding but also time-consuming and taxing it can be. And so again, in terms of sustainability, if you are doing one-to-ones and if you feel comfortable with that setting, you can explore the one-to-many. I found that it was an amazing experience. It was an amazing experience to help me scale in a way that still felt very comfortable. It was a very small group. We were only 5 creators as 5 members. So it doesn't have to be big. But again, think in terms of how you can scale by doing what you're doing to one person. And now take the one-to-many or the group approach. That can work really well. I definitely recommend that for this reason as well. And then the last piece. So today I'm talking about an ecosystem that is not only writing, it's writing and speaking. And I've had a lot of questions in terms of speaking, how you become a public, how you become a paid public speaker. And my answer is very simple. You have to speak. And what I mean by this is if you want to get paid, The first thing is speak everywhere you can. In my case, I started doing podcasts. I started speaking on interviews last year. I started with these live sessions that I do on a regular basis so that when people Google your name, when companies Google your name for whatever your topic is, your name pops up as a speaker. And so I went from speaking free to then proactively contacting organizations where I could have more exposure. For example, Chambers of Commerce. There are so many women associations, entrepreneur associations, small business associations. So I don't know where you are in your community, but you can look around schools, academia. I've done work with universities, for example. So you start speaking. That's the very first thing. You start speaking, you start going on camera, you start getting comfortable, you build that muscle. And at the same time, you start to build your image. Go into your LinkedIn profile. If you go to mine, you will see that it's all about speaker because that's where I find my leads. So you put your videos there, you make sure that you really project yourself as a speaker. I even spoke at my daughter's school to talk about how to be an author. She's 6 years old. So you have a lot of opportunities to speak. And so for me to give you this perspective, I started 3 years ago and in this period I started from zero to then starting do a lot of YouTube interviews, podcasts, live sessions, more in the creator space. Then it evolved into these associations, chambers of commerce, and so on. And now what I'm doing is actually charging for my public speaking. I do workshops for companies. I do webinars both in Hong Kong, but also internationally. I traveled to Sydney last year to speak at an event for UBS. I traveled to China, to Shanghai to speak for a law firm. But it's been a journey, right? It's been a 3-year journey. And so very important that you just start by taking the small steps and then you grow from there. And so that has been the journey on public speaking, a lot of fun. Next month, as I was saying, I'm going to a big HR conference in Mumbai in India, but all of these happen by putting yourself out there, starting to do work for free and getting that exposure. So now that I've shared a little bit about my journey and here we are starting year 4, I wanted to make this more practical. This is just my journey. I just share it so that you know where I'm coming from, my experience. There might be things there that are relevant for you, but I did want to share some specific tips that I think can help. The very first thing is that I'd like you to start thinking in terms of how to create systems. And this can be a bit overwhelming if you haven't thought of systems before, but I'm going to make this very granular with specific examples that can be relevant. One thing that has worked really well for me is serialization. So most of you, if you're joining here, it's probably because you are already on Substack. So after this session, I'm going to ask you to do this exercise. Pick your most popular topic, the one that you're very comfortable, that you've already written a lot about. And instead of continuing to publish disconnected articles or posts or newsletters, try to create a series. Maybe it's a 5-issue series or maybe it's 10, but try to create this journey, this system so that you start to connect the pieces. In my case, I've done this multiple times. I've done it on the topic of personal brand. For example, I created what I called a serialization of Personal Brand Express. It was 10 sessions starting from what is a personal brand, where you can create it, where are some tips. So you take your readers through a journey. That means that you're going to elevate the value of what you're offering. And because the value is elevated, you have more possibilities of monetizing. You can monetize through subscriptions or what you can do at the end of that series, you bundle it up and you turn it into an ebook and you put it on Gumroad. Very simple. That has been my strategy. I've done it maybe 3 or 4 times. I did it last year in December. I did 4 live series. On how to grow on Substack. I went from organic growth strategies to monetization and so on. I had them weekly. And then what I did is I positioned them as a series so that they wouldn't live in isolation. And that helped me convert because a lot of my subscribers, they actually saw value in having this journey rather than having disconnected pieces all over the place. So serialization is a great way. To create a system. You can also repurpose what you already have. If you already have, let's say fiction, some people in my community are in fiction, you might bundle up 20 fiction stories and that could become an ebook. If you love collaboration, Magdalena was telling me, I would love to be the project manager for a co-authored book. Amazing. So that's something else that you can do, but try to think of how to repackage, repurpose what you already have. And create that connection between the pieces because it's going to elevate the value of what you have, even if the content is the same. When I talk about systems, you can also think about frameworks. When you have your own frameworks, it's much easier to scale. What I mean by these is, for example, in my case, my digital courses. I mentioned that last year I published 4 in 6 months or less. The reason why I was able to do that is because I developed a simple framework that worked for me. It's usually 8 modules. I do a very simple introductory video. I have the lesson and then I have a couple of exercises. Find a framework that is comfortable for you. Once you have it, it's easier to write books. It's easier to do live sessions like I have today. I have my little framework here, old school. It's easier to create your courses. So try to think simple systems that are repeatable and that you're going to be able to replicate. Number 2 that has been very helpful for me is how you elevate your content. I talked about the starving artist mindset at the beginning, and I used to suffer from that a lot. So I went for ebooks that were very cheap and I had cheap subscriptions and things like that. So what can you do to elevate the value of what you're creating and hence the prices? Let me give you a very simple example of how perception works. The same content that you might be publishing as an ebook probably has a value of around $5 to $9. If you look on Amazon, that's pretty much the standard for ebooks, very often less. Now, if that same content is published and presented as a digital course, all of a sudden chances are for the same content that is a little bit more polished, perhaps you have videos or exercises. Now as a course, as a mini course, mine are, for example, $88. So you start to see how you start to elevate and how you're able to multiply the earnings simply by changing the format. You can also think in terms of elevating Who your audience is. What I have found is that many creators focus a lot on the B2C, on the consumer side of things, and I do that as well. However, if you're able to repurpose what you already have and sell it to corporates, then all of a sudden, instead of doing a webinar where you might be charging $47 per individual, you can actually sell it to a corporate for $3,000 or $5,000. Because these are pretty standard rates in the corporate world, depending on where you are, depending on the industry. But can you elevate your offer by going from B2C to B2B? Or what you can do as well in terms of elevating, let's say that you're a coach and you're already offering one-to-one coaching services. You can go and then offer a package that is much more premium. Perhaps in that package you have calls, but you also might have an auditing of whatever your client is focusing on. And so all of a sudden, instead of selling one session that might be $100, you're talking about a 4-digit package. So this is what I mean by elevating your offer, how to go from very cheap products to more high-value, high-end products. So how you can elevate by creating these products that have a higher perceived value, but also the type of clients that you're focusing on. Another way of doing so is you can focus specifically, for example, on founders or CEOs. One of my clients, Michael Lim, who is a very successful solopreneur, he focuses on very successful, high net worth individuals who come from the corporate world, C-level executives, and they want to start their own solopreneur journey. So these are people that are much more likely to go for this high value. So that's the second one. I talked about system. I talked about how to elevate your offer, how to elevate your content, how to curate what you already have. And on the last piece, I've already talked about it, but I did want to emphasize the importance of speaking. I know that speaking is very daunting for many. I'm an introvert and I very often talk about how there's these misperceptions, whether you have an accent, whether, whatever your situation is, I do believe that everyone has an opportunity to go and share their stories. And so you can start very small. You don't have to go straight for the big stage with 500 people. Start with a partner. Go with someone that you trust. The very first person that I went on a podcast was actually a peer from LinkedIn. And it was incredible because I trusted her and I told her that I was very nervous. And she said, look, Veronica, it doesn't have to be perfect. And so every time now I'm about to start a live session or a podcast, or even go to a big stage, that's what I tell myself. It doesn't have to be perfect. I do encourage you to use the power of public speaking because it is going to allow you to reach new audiences, to have a new format. Even if you want to continue to develop your ecosystem, it can help you with hosting webinars, hosting cohorts, doing live sessions. And then from there, you can start seeing how you can turn that into your own offer and monetize it and have keynotes and workshops and things like these. So with these 3 tips from today, I talked about systems and how to start to be more strategic about your content. I talked about how to elevate it and let's get rid of these starving artist mindset, increase your prices, start to create products that have more value. And the last piece is the power of speaking. So from today, if you need a little nudge, just send me a message like, hey, Veronica, I'm terrified. Tell me something to get on stage. I'm happy to support you. So this is in terms of very actionable and practical things. So we've talked about the journey of a solopreneur starting from zero to 3 years and what that, that journey was like. I talked about the mindset. Remember a growth mindset, always develop new skills, always try new things. Talked about abundance as well, abundance towards others, collaboration, community, but also abundance towards yourself. Having a winner's mindset. What is the win of the day? I always tell my husband, okay. I have something, I have to share something that went well today, even if you feel that it was the worst day in the world. And then from there, I shared my personal journey. This is my story. I'm a mom. I don't have all the time in the world to be able to spend into my business because I want to spend time with my kids. I want to do triathlon. So that's why sustainability for me is such a key word. So think about your word and how you're going to use these as lenses, as your compass. As you keep continuing developing your ecosystem. And last, I gave you some very actionable tips that I hope will help you in your journey as a creator, as a solopreneur, as a creator. Feel free to check out all the resources in the Lemon Tree Mindset. I have a chat that's very active. One thing I've had a lot of questions about public speaking. For those of you who are interested, I do have my course Speak to Scale that is really to help you incorporate public speaking into your strategy. Thank you so much for being here. If you can put a little heart, if you want to say bye-bye, thank you so much and have a great day or night. Bye.