How To Make Money As A Multi Passionate Entrepreneur

I am always pleasantly surprised when one of my readers says she already has a whole bunch of different parts of her business (in real life terms this means that she is a multi-passionate entrepreneur). But most of my peeps have no idea how to make money from all that attention they get for all the different parts of their businesses!

I first heard the term “multi-passionate entrepreneur” from Marie Forleo. She is an amazing gal who works with the likes of Oprah and Richard Branson, so girlfriend knows her stuff! The cool thing about Marie is she teaches entrepreneurs, hobknobs with famous people, writes books AND does dance and exercise videos on the side with no apologies!

Another person I follow is Chase Jarvis who talks about us all being “hypens” now, as in photographer-entrepreneur-podcaster. He says if our parents had 5 jobs in their lives, we will have 5 jobs all going at the same time.

It Is Okay To Do ALL The Things… Just Not All At Once!

So let's get this out of the way right up front… as entrepreneurs we want to be able to do “All The Things”! For me I want to do books and videos and blogging and selling on Etsy and Pinterest and product photography! And that is just touching the tip of the ice burg. There are SO MANY things that I could do (you too?) that it is easy to get overwhelmed and not know how to actually make money from any of them!

In fact, about 8 years ago I had partnered with a dear friend and together we had over half a million social connections, 25K people on various email lists and could not get anyone to buy anything no matter how hard (and randomly) we tried!

Fast forward to today and we are still besties and writing partners, but our businesses have split up into our own interests and ways of doing things… and, gasp!… I am now making money from all the different weird parts of my businesses (more about that later!)

So for sure you CAN do all the things you love and want to learn, just you can't do them all at one time! You have to have seasons when you are working exclusively on different areas of your passions so that you can focus and make some progress!

What Can YOU Do To Make More Money From Your Assets?

What are assets? Everything you make or do! So your blog posts, videos, products, social media posts… anything you make or post is an asset to your business!

1. Know Your Niche(s)

The very first thing you want to do when you are thinking about selling something to one of your niches is what they need and what they expect to see. Humans are very skittery creatures and become confused if they see things you are doing that don't match up with their needs.

Make sure what ever they see in that tiny little experience of a blog post, video or product matches up with them and their needs.

2. Know What Part of Their Journey They Are In

I am super advanced in many marketing things so I think I should teach beyond the basics. But let's be honest, what I consider to be “basics” are probably pretty far into the customer journey for many of my peeps.

Could be that your customers are in the beginning stage of their business where they would be most likely to buy how to guides. You should make assets for them (blog posts, videos, guides) that will teach them to do something.

3. Make Things They Need

I have found over the years that if I figure out what my customers need, instead of doing what I want, I sell more. For example, making a real estate agent planner was not on the top of “fun” list, but I hunkered down and did it and it is the top seller in my Etsy store!

Also, scratch you own itch! I started my Etsy store with forms that I already used in my own business. Dr. Martha is selling training & courses based on her experience as an acupuncturist… smart!

Listen to them… some of my best products have come about because someone asked me to make it! Another top seller is my Ebay listing sheet. My Ebay bestie asked for that for her assistant to use and now it is a product in my store.

4. Figure Out How To Leverage Each Experience They Have With You

It is easy to forget that each video or blog post or tweet that someone has with you is most likely the first time they have heard about you. Also, they are probably not interested in you, they are interested in what you can do for them!

So each little thing you put out there in the world should be full of things that they are interested in exclusively!

For example say I have a post about SEO for Pinterest… I start with someone nerdy like me, who is interested in SEO & Pinterest, and make a little sales funnel in that post that leads them to either signing up for my email list so I can stay in touch with them (this could be a free PDF offer, or just asking them to sign up for your email list) OR sends them to one of my products or an affiliate product that they can buy to learn more.

First Contact With Yousell them somethingget them on your email list!video, blog post or social media

5. Find Affiliate Products That You Can Sell To Them Too

By now you might be really freaked out thinking, dammit, now I have to make even more “stuff” to sell or give away. But you don't!

I am a firm believer in…

trying to capture their email address first but then
sending them to an affilate product that I believe in!

For example, let's go back to the Pinterest person who visited my blog post! I could send them to a great tool (Tailwind), a course I love (Adventures In SEO) or even a book that I recommend on Amazon.

I KNOW I can never address EVERYTHING about a topic in one video, blog post or email, so letting them know other resources that are available in a super genuine way actually helps them learn more!

Multi-Passionate Case Studies

I thought it would be fun to give you a peek into some of the peeps that I know who are ROCKING all the things! Now, this is not a challenge, but maybe you could start thinking about all the cool things you do and make a list of them so you can have a strong inventory of your assets and strengths!

Dr. Martha Lucas

Let's start with Dr. Martha! First off she is an experienced Acupuncturist, author and ecommerce seller. She travels around the world teaching how to do acupuncture and is super brave about trying new marketing channels! Here are a few of her assets…

A Denver Acupuncture website and practice
Her teaching acupuncture website
Books & CDs
Upcoming online courses with a partner
Email list of past customers (commercial & personal)
Essential oils blends (ecommerce)
Mei Zen Skincare (ecommerce)
Facebook lives
YouTube channel (work in progress)

Whew, Dr. Martha has been a very busy woman! And good for her!

Years ago I had a coach who looked at the mess of all my things and told me I should pare them down to just one and focus exclusively on that for the rest of my life… oh, hell no!

What about if we looked at all her different bits and thought of all the amazing things she can do BECAUSE she can approach things in all these different ways!

Kara's Biz

Kara is a fun gal! She is also not one to stay on the straight and narrow. Her business is selling cake decorating supplies to individuals and also to professional cake decorators. And oh yeah, she teaches other Etsy sellers how to do their Etsy SEO in a small group she runs. Here are Kara's assets…

She sells cake decorating products on her own cake decorating website
Her Etsy store, A Cake To Remember
Etsy shop reviews & bonus Facebook group
YouTube channel with over 35K subscribers and almost 2 MILLION views
Pinterest account with almost 9K followers – she says, “I also get a lot of traffic from Pinterest for tutorials and my cake pricing guide, but the conversion rate is fairly low.”

My Biz

Okay, since you are here, you probably are interested in my biz too! One thing (maybe the only thing) that I think I do differently than either Kara or Dr. Martha is that I am HYPER focused on who my peeps are and what they are interested in!

I start with their needs in mind and then make assets that will help them walk through my “stuff” and then find and buy things that will support them throughout their journey as entrepreneurs.

My main website (marketingartfully.com) – for entrepreneurs, real estate agents, writers & Etsy sellers, 75K plus monthly readers
My main YouTube channel – Etsy Marketing help, time management, social media & SEO, 1,200-ish subscribers & almost 200K lifetime views
Skillshare classes – instead of selling my own classes I find it easier to make them on Skillshare and let them help sell them!
Pinterest – all my interests, over 5K followers and 283K monthly views
Twitter (not all that effective anymore) 20K+ followers
Email list – segregated by my niches, onboarding with links to different blog posts & products – 6,000
Artsy Fartsy YouTube Channel – 3K subscribers and monetized last year!
Artsy Fartsy Life – my only foray into B2C, now gets MORE visits than Marketing Artfully!

I KNOW! That seems like a lot (even to me), but the way that I get good at things is to 1) try new things and 2) focus on them exclusively for a month at a time!

For example, last year's theme was “grow my main YouTube channel by posting a video a day”. This month is work on both of my YouTube channels and take a course about how to finesse my skills. That's it. Oh, and a few daily tasks that I have to keep the other bits running, but basically each month I pick something to focus on and do that to the exclusion of everything else!

Kara's Money Making Dilemma

Let's look at Kara's dilemma. She is a freaking BOSS at selling cake making supplies, in fact she has over 20,000 sales on her Etsy store!

But she wants to sell more passive income things like her cake making tutorials & guides. These are PDFs that help professional cake decorators get their businesses up and running, profitably. This is what she said about her struggles to sell her guides…

A challenge that I come up against is the fact that my target market tends to be professional cake decorators, and they buy supplies and decorations as they need them for specific projects. So I’m not dealing with a customer base that buys things for fun or as collectors. They’ll get an order for a wedding cake with a very specific lace pattern that they need THAT mold for, and they only need that one mold. So their purchases are targeted, and they don’t buy things other than those.
If people are trying to learn how to price their items they’re probably not making a lot of money, so they’re reluctant to invest in guides on the topic. (Even if my guide is the only one they’ll ever need, and the best one out there, if I do say so myself!) But the number of articles out there that touch on the subject but don’t really get into the nitty gritty keep people reading those, and they don’t want to pay for information even if it’s better than what they find for free.

So what is Kara's problem? Let's take a peek at what I think is her biggest asset right now, her YouTube channel.

So looking at this, she definitely doesn't have a focus on selling PDF guides to professional cake decorators! The top category is just a mix of all her videos in backwards order (which could be confusing due to all her different niches) and then how to videos, which could be good for her “how to make certain kinds of cakes” PDF guides, but which doesn't scream “I have the answer to your cake decorating company questions”.

Next let's drill down to one of her videos for cake decorators!

Alrighty then, how could Kara sell more PDF guides with this video? I think there are some super easy changes she could do to make this a little sales funnel for her guides!

Title :: I only watched the first minute and a half of this video and heard 4 strong ideas for marketing a cake decorating business. I would change the title of this video to something sexier like “18 Easy Marketing Tips & Ideas For Your Cake Decorating Business”.
Description :: There are no cake decorating keywords in this description!
Guide :: Move the guide above the coupon code for buying supplies
Links :: I am not sure why she has a list of links at the bottom of her description. Especially when you are super niche-y in different areas you need to make sure that everything in that one little video or asset has a strong call to action to ONLY the things in your business that match that part!

I AM NOT PICKING ON KARA! I promise! (my stuff is not in perfect order either!)

The cool thing about people like Kara (and me) is that we have LOTS of things that we have already done and that can be tweaked to work better. I adore the fact that she got these things out there in the world and now has the luxury of finessing them, rather than starting from scratch with nothing to work with!

Wrapping Up How To Make Money As A Multi Passionate Entrepreneur

Hopefully you have at least skimmed most of this post and have figured out a thing or two! My top takeaways from writing this are that you need to make sure you have niches and that you are focused on your peeps having a great experience AND that you should try to sell them something.

Not in a skeevy “buy my stuff” way, but in a “I really think this will help you” way!