Monetizing What You Enjoy Doing
Cathy: How do I monetize what I really enjoy doing so I don’t have to sit at my desk job every day. This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com/Cathy: How do I monetize what I really enjoy doing so I don’t have to sit at my desk job every day. This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com/
Reid: Cathy Vartuli from the http://www.IntimacyDojo.com/ and when I’m wearing my Sex Geek Summer Camp t-shirt, it’s business advice for sex educators.
Cathy: Which is a great thing because there’s not a lot of information out there for sex educators by sex educators.
Reid: There there’s not so we’re trying to change that and there’s a lot of other you know really great resources out there about monetizing the things that you love to do and in the sex geek community, some of that information because those folks who most of them mean really well whom aren’t sex geeks and nerds about inclusivity and you know gender dynamics and things like that some of that advice can be a little bit more arduous to listen to because it can seem very you know heteronormative or gender essentialist.
Cathy: It’s translated as you go.
Reid: Yeah, or just really non-inclusive so hopefully what we’re doing well with at Sex Geek Summer Camp and and other programs of mine is like hey this is business advice for sex educators taught by sex educators so we’re doing the job of minding our P’s and Q’s and hopefully inviting people of all walks of sex education to continue upgrading the things that we’re doing around marketing and just you know how we look at the industry of sex education and things like that, so hopefully not only we’re making the world a better place but we’re making our world a better place at the same time.
Cathy: Yeah, so there’s a lot of like I started very awkwardly like I think it’s 11 years ago now and I and I didn’t have a lot of training and I was kind of fumbling my way around.
Reid: With business stuff or what we say.
Cathy: Yes, with business stuff, I was at http://www.thrivingnow.com/ doing tapping stuff and luckily Rick, my business partner had been doing this for longer so he had you know he mentored me some and I started digging into different marketing, different marketers and there’s a lot of stuff that just made me nauseous and I just like very negative pain-based sales selling and then I was lucky enough to find people who are very loving and like, let’s inspire people [Inaudible 00:02:21] so listen to your gut for some of the stuff, is some of it makes you feel really uncomfortable don’t go there, it’s okay to say no, I’m going to find a different way but realize that offering your stuff for sale having people pay you to do stuff also serves them, I really love that because a lot of people are more likely to let the information in and spend time with the program if they if they feel invested in it so if they if they paid you some money and then there’s a nice flow of win-win, you’re providing them organized information a way they can learn easily and they’re getting what they need out of it are you and you’re also getting supported so if you have any resistance about letting money flow in around that that’s one thing that that helped me that you know I was like oh this is a synergy, we’re helping each other.
Reid: Yeah and again if you’re if you’re trying to get make a living off of doing education exclusively that kind of requires of you to have some sort of income coming in for most of us to pay our bills because that’s what making a living means and if for your own congruency you’re like but this information needs everyone needs this information so I can’t charge, I can’t charge for it because then I’m excluding people who can’t afford it then what I would advocate for is to do basically you’re experiencing right now is it my YouTube channel is for free almost all the advice I have to give except for the super new stuff, the stuff I’m learning and implementing all that stuff’s already on a video that you’re watching for free so you have access to all of my advice if you’re willing to watch 854 videos.
Cathy: And not have that organized in handouts and
Reid: Exactly! So it’s all there and I’m just kind of posted creating and posting it as I go but if you need something more succinct something with more structure something more focused and lead you through a process of discovery with support then you need to pay me, I invite you to pay me for that experience because that’s how I pay my bills so that I can continue doing this stuff for free and you know not get you know be able to sustain the business and continue doing what I’m doing so for those of you who do not want to plug in plug and play into a capitalistic model still take this advice and see how you how you re-work it but this is based on you know creating content and helping ways to market it so that people see the value and then will pay you and then there’s the added bonus Cathy already mentioned which is people tend to do the courses that they paid for. Not Always.
Cathy: Not always.
Reid: But as somebody who has given as a gift certain courses to many people and I know they’ve never done it because I can look at the computer system behind.
Cathy: They’ve never even logged in.
Reid: They’ve never even logged in; I have a lot of evidence maybe yours is different that when you gift people things they tend not to do them.
Cathy: I’m also a big fan if you have a desk job that’s paying your bills, I’m a big fan of don’t put your desk job until you have the infrastructure setup and have evidence that the income you’re bringing in is going to be able to sustain you. A lot of people get very excited and they’re like, oh I’m going to quit now and it does take a while to build up things though it’s much faster if you have the support and guidance of people that have already gone through the path.
Reid: Yeah, there’s some advice to to jumping and building the parachute on the way down, however if you already have a parachute, maybe want to keep that parachute and then have a backup boom, analogy. Achievement unlocked.
Cathy: I’m so sorry.
Reid: Leave your comments below. We’ll leave it on that. Thanks for writing in.