7.1 Steps to Create Multiple Streams of Income

1. Establish financial security.
Now, this idea isn’t sexy, but it’s imperative: Don’t focus
your time and energy into building a second stream of
income until your primary source is secure. Whether you
have a day job or own your own business, focus on
establishing and securing a primary monthly income that
will support your expenses before you pursue other
steps.
2. Clarify your unique value.
Every person on this planet has unique gifts, abilities, life
experiences and value to offer -- and be highly
compensated for. Figure out the knowledge, experience,
ability or solution you have that others will value and
might pay you for. Remember, what might be common
knowledge to you isn’t for other people.
You and your personality differentiate your value from
that of every other person on earth. Many people will
resonate with you (and your style) better than they will
with someone else offering value that's similar or even
the same.
Packaging is how you can differentiate your value. When
I wrote my book The Miracle Morning, I had to overcome
my insecurity that waking up early wasn’t
exactly something I invented. Would there really be a
market for the book? But readers shared that the book
was life-changing in the way the information was
presented. It was written focusing on how to
significantly improve any area of life by simply altering
how a person starts the day.
Knowledge is the one thing you can increase very
quickly. As Tony Robbins wrote in Money: Master the
Game, "One reason people succeed is that they have
knowledge other people don't have. You pay your lawyer
or your doctor for the knowledge and skills" you lack.
Increase your knowledge in a specific area, and
you'll simultaneously increase the value that others will
pay you for, either to teach them what you know or
apply your knowledge on their behalf.
Related: Create Side-Hustle Income by Teaching What
You Already Know
3. Identify your market.
Determine whom you are best qualified to serve. Based
on the value you can add for others or the problems you
can help people solve, who will pay you for the value or
solution you can provide?
4. Build a community.
A turning point in my financial life came when I heard
author and self-made multimillionaire Dan Kennedy say,
"The most valuable asset you have is your email list, so
focus on growing it."
I don't like to think of my email community as merely a
list of names but rather as a group of individuals, each
with their own hopes and dreams.
Here's how you can build your community:
Acquire an email-marketing program (good: AWeber ,
better: Infusionsoft ).
Get a program to create an opt-in page (good:
LeadPages.com , better: Kajabi ).
Create an added-value deliverable such as a free report,
an ebook, an audio or a video training so that people will
happily provide their email address in exchange for the
value you provide.
5. Ask your community about their desires.
You can either guess or assume what people desire and
need, invest valuable time in creating it and then hope
your guess was correct. But remember: Hope is rarely
the best strategy.
Or send an email to members of your community with
the link to a survey (using a free service
like SurveyMonkey), asking what they want or need help
with in your area of value that you've identified. Ask
open-ended questions to help you later brainstorm or
offer multiple choices if you've already thought about
what you can provide.
6. Create a solution.
After your community members tell you what they need,
it's your golden opportunity to get to work and create it.
This could be a physical or digital product (a book, an
audio, a video, a written training program or software) or
a service (dog grooming, babysitting, coaching,
consulting, speaking or training).
7. Plan the launch.
Think about how Apple rolls out its products. The
company doesn’t just throw a product on the shelf or its
website. No, the company makes it into an event. Apple
builds anticipation months in advance, so much so that
people are willing to camp out in front of stores for
weeks to be the first in line.
Do that. To learn how, read the definitive book on the
topic, Launch by Jeff Walker.
7.1 Find a mentor.
The best way to cut your learning curve and achieve a
specific result is to find people who’ve already achieved
what you want and then model their behavior. Rather
than try to figure it all out on your own, find someone
who has already achieved what you want, determine how
this person did it, model this behavior and make it your
own.
While you might seek a relationship with a face-to-
face human mentor, you could also hire a coach, read a
book or articles by an expert or do web research. After
some consideration, you may decide to make this your
first step.
Schedule time to begin implementing these 7.1 steps,
one at a time, and within months you can be enjoying
the benefits, the perks and the financial security and
freedom that comes from having multiple streams of
income.