Generating multiple streams of income is an absolute must especially during scary times like this. Because of Coronavirus, the thing that we used to know as “job security” no longer exists.
And with so many people losing their jobs, the idea of relying on just one source of income is now a thing of the past.
The problem is knowing where to actually start..
So in the beginning of May I decided to see if I could do a little experiment where I could create a case study where I create 3 new income streams from scratch.
The results?
3 new income streams that did more than $60,000+ in revenue (with 50% profit margins).
I document everything that I did in this case study. That way if you’re feeling uncertainty, fear, and overwhelm, that you too can still learn just a handful of skills that can set you up with financial security even when times are scary.
Here’s exactly how I did it.
How To Create Multiple Streams of Income in 2024
Step 1. Find Your Why
This part sounds a little bit out of place. I already hear the readers thinking “Mike I don’t care about having a why, I just want to make money.”
Well let me explain. Back when coronavirus hit our side of the world in March, I was going through so much uncertainty in business. Because my income relies primarily on Facebook advertising, I was going crazy with all the changes that were going on in the backend.
Some days we would make a bunch of money, most days we would lose a bunch of money. But right when things start looking consistent multiple things happened.
- We got our ad accounts banned
- I got betrayed by someone that I thought was close to me
- Coronavirus hit
Those 3 things threw me down this dark downwards spiral where I remember I was in a hotel in Singapore confused and not knowing what the hell was going on in my life, and I broke down in front of my girlfriend for the first time.
I just had no idea how I was going to save everything that I had worked so hard to build up until this point.
What changed was when I found my WHY: something that was a lot bigger than the daily problems that we were facing.
I remember reading a book called Think and Grow rich. There was a chapter in the book that said with no vision the people will perish.
Something that I forgot earlier on when I first got started is I never actually knew HOW I was going to accomplish my goals. All I did know was WHY I needed to accomplish them.
It was knowing my WHY that kept me going even though I was uncertain about the process. And it was the very thing that I forgot to do the moment success started coming. So before I could pick up the mess that was my life and fix it, I had to get extremely reflective on my values and what I actually want out of life. Without that “north star” or that compass leading me forward I knew that all the decisions that I would make would not have been the right decisions.
Step 2. Isolate Your “Zone Of Genius”
My biggest problem is I am a control freak. Because of experiencing extreme scarcity when I was younger and my model of the world was based on seeing my parents work 16 hour days to just get us by.
So in my mind, I have this constant immigrant mentality that if I don’t work 16 hours per day then I will be unsuccessful.
I often still feel guilty any time I am not constantly working and it is this very trait in my life that has caused so much unhappiness.
What changed was in this period of time, I began to isolate my zone of genius.
And that was getting extremely cheap eyeballs from paid advertising. On a given day we get email sign ups from people who have no idea who I am for as little as a single dollar.
Once I figured that out, I knew I had to double down.
Step 3. Isolate Your Weaknesses Or Things You Hate Doing
This part was the hardest because you never want to admit what you are bad at for fear of showing weakness.
But this was one of the most crucial steps for me to get out of my own little pity party of one.
Once I knew what my zone of genius was I had to get crystal clear on what areas I am weak at (or completely hate doing).
Here they were:
- Product creation
- Systems
- Customer service
- Managing teams
My problem was since I was a solo entrepreneur my entire life, it was hard for me to release control and let other people do these jobs for fear of messing everything up. So I always ended up doing everything.
I knew for me to get out of our yo-yoing revenue, I had to find a way to partner with people who were either good at the above or loved doing this.
Step 4. Create “Strategic Alliances” With People Who Love What You Hate Doing
They say the best time to start digging a well is before you are thirsty. Relationships work the same way. Luckily for me for the last 6 months of 2019 all I did was build relationships on accident on my podcast.
Luckily for me, I had no idea what I was doing or how I could make money with my guests. So all I did in that time was find ways that I could “dig the well” before I was thirsty and give all my guests as much value as possible.
And because of that when the time asked to partner up on some things, it was a no brainer for some of these people that had a product.
Here were the products I began doing paid advertising for.
- Chris Winters (Teaching people how to get $2000 from clients to run Facebook ads for them)
- Gerry Cramer & Rob Jones (Teaching people how to make $100-$1000 per day with affiliate marketing)
- Rhonda Swan (Teaching people how to make money selling courses and webinars)
This is where the bulk of the new income streams came from.
Not from “business models,” but from strategic relationships with people that already had the existing products.
I would do half of the work, which was bringing in the cheap eyeballs. They would do the rest, which was everything else I hated doing.
The total revenue from this project was $60,000+ for the month of may alone with profit margins of 50% because they were all digital products.
Step 5. Aim For Progress Instead Of Perfection
If you start marketing your product the moment it’s perfect, it’s already too late. Because the market was constantly changing from the news and media that was rapidly changing and shifting the psychology of our prospects on their end, it was hard to get a perfect product out there.
So what we did instead was we just threw up a bunch of stuff on the wall and just saw what stuck.
These 3 strategic partnerships that brought in the bulk of the new revenue was because I literally tried 10-20 ideas in a row and saw which idea was bringing in the most revenue for the least headache.
We just threw everything up, and just 80/20’d where the money was coming in instead of spending months creating products that no one would actually buy.
We did a bunch of seed launches, and sold products to see if there was demand before creating it. Instead of trying to redo an entire course we tried seeing if any of the partners had existing assets that they were no longer selling to see if we could revive those.
All of which didn’t take much of people’s time.
We used old sales pitches, videos, and copy that were already created and spun it around to see if it would convert with people that had no idea who we were on facebook.
Step 6. Document What You Do
This part gave me the most anxiety, because I was used to doing everything by myself and never actually took notes on what I did.
But for me to start scaling and thinking of higher level problems to solve I knew I had to get out of the weeds.
So every single time I would do a task, I would write down on a google doc exactly what I was doing and link it to a video recording so that someone could easily come in and do the exact same job.
This was annoying because it took a couple of hours to do each time, but every single time I was finished I was happy because now I knew I created something that someone else can do.
Step 7. Fire Yourself
This is the phase where I am now in right now, and is the reason why I will be posting more videos consistently on YouTube.
With everything to start running like a machine on the back end, I can spend all my time managing my sister and cousin who are the ones that are running our Facebook ad campaigns.
Now with me doing everything in my ability to fire myself from operations, I want to begin spending more of my time creating case studies like this that you can follow along so that you can start taking action and getting results.
So as we are figuring more of this stuff out, I’m going to document it all and give it away on this channel.
But here’s the thing.
I am not perfect.
I still make a lot of mistakes.
And all the profit that we made last month from these new income streams I’m getting paid $0 because I’m throwing it all back into the company to allow it to keep on growing.
Warren Buffett says to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
Even though the whole world seems like it’s burning down, now is the most important time more than ever to capitalize on all the crazy opportunities that exist right now.
The only question for you is are you going to play a victim and wait for this to be over before taking action?
Or are you going to double down and figure out a way for you to start creating multiple streams of income?
You can start by checking out my blog on mikevestil.com
How can I make a second income?
The first thing to do is start modeling what I did to not just make a second income, but a third and a fourth.
1. Find your strengths and weaknesses
2. Create a list of people that could help you in your areas of weakness
3. Find their pain points in their business and life
4. Be the solution by learning the skill that solves their pain point
The problem with asking yourself, “how can I make a second income?” is that the primary focus of that question is based on your needs.
But here’s the thing about money. Money doesn’t care about your needs. All money cares about is by fulfilling the solution of other people’s needs.
To make a second income, you need to become more valuable to other people rather than just in your job. So to truly make a second income you have to become a valuable asset to someone else.
What are the most profitable side hustles?
The most profitable side hustles can be broken down into 3 categories
- Influence building (audience)
- Product creation (product)
- Being “the bridge” (marketing)
1. Blogging
Blogging is a profitable side hustle because what you are doing is building an audience. Building an audience or a tribe in any business is the harvest part. Once you have an audience, the rest is easy.
In terms of product creation, you just ask what your audience’s pain points are, then you partner with companies that have already created the solutions to those problems (affiliate marketing).
And how you be the bridge is simply by telling your audience about the amazing product that they’ve already been looking for
2. Freelancing
Freelancing is different from blogging because you are now the product. You have a skill like building websites, photography, or graphic design but you have no idea how to get clients.
So some things that you can ask yourself is:
- Where is there already an existing audience of people that are already looking for my product?
- Who are the potential bridges that would love for me to connect with their people?
- What value can I add to the bridges?
An example of this would be if I wanted to create websites for dentists only.
I am already the product so that part is taken care of.
I would then ask myself, “who are the people that are the bridges that can connect me to a bunch of dentists already looking for my service?”
- Dental conferences that I can speak on stage about the effectiveness of having a high converting website
- Companies that already sell dentists marketing services, that have existing clients, but no one on their team to build high converting websites for them
Both of these solutions would be the bridge to put me in front of high quality dentists that would actually pay for my service
3.Creating Digital Products
If you can create a product that solves an amazing need. There are people out there that would love to sell your product for you as long as you deal with the customer service and fulfillment.
This is exactly the partners I look for because I hate creating digital products.
They have everything built, and I simply go up to them and sell their products, and then I get a percentage of all the upside without any of the responsibilities.
How can I get rich quick?
The fastest way to get rich quick is by solving big problems for big people. Think of the richest people in the world that “got rich quick.”
Was it because they sold some fancy courses? No. It’s because they tackle big problems.
So for you to get rich quick you have to solve a problem that is huge for people that are willing to spend.
1. Make a list of your dream clients
Make a list of 100 people that you would love to do business with. If you look back at when I was podcasting, that was exactly how I began to reach out to future dream clients. All I did was I invited them on a podcast.
2. Find their pain points that they are willing to pay $2,000-$10,000 to solve
During the podcast I asked them what were their biggest pain points and challenges when it comes to growing their business. Most of them said marketing and getting eyeballs to their offers.
3. Add value to those dream clients before asking for the sale
What I did is I took the podcast content, and made them increase their authenticity with their audience by pulling stories out of them that they were never able to tell just straight to a camera. Many of which brought sales back to their businesses without me ever getting a dime.
This led to them wanting to come back on as well as allowed me to start digging the well before I was thirsty.
4. Ask for the sale
Once a relationship has been established find a win win win solution where you, the client, and their customer all win. If you learn how to run Facebook Ads for clients, that is one of the most valuable skills you can learn to get a high influx of cash into your bank account fast.
How To Create Multiple Streams of Income Summary
In conclusion, there are multiple ways to skin a cat. And as you can see, there are many different angles that you can go down that can create multiple streams of income for you. But what it all stems down to is how much value you are actually providing to your customers, clients, and strategic business partners. The more value you give, the more streams will naturally flow to you.
Which is why I recommend starting a blog. Because it is one of the fastest and easiest ways to start creating multiple streams of income while documenting everything you are doing to outsource it for someone else to do.
Create your blog now in as little as 5 minutes or less.
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