1. Plate Spinning - How to Ride The Waves and Weather The Storms

The world is changing at an alarming rate as I am sure you are aware. High streets are diminishing, jobs are being cut and vast swathes of people and businesses are moving more and more online. The stark reality is that you have to move with the times or get left behind and that sometimes means learning new skills and taking control.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about "drop shipping", selling "snake oil" or hassling people to buy your stuff online here. I call this a lifestyle business built around "plate-spinning".  I learned many years ago to make myself my biggest asset and I did this by continuously learning new skills from the age of around 26.

Not just learning them but digging really deep into each topic and becoming about as "expert" as I could:

By having multiple skills in a wide variety of topics, I was able to switch "trades" each time the economy changed for the worst.

For example, I was living in Spain from 1998 to 2007 and when the Spanish economy started to crash in 2004/2005, I turned OFF my real estate business and turned ON my professional photography business (weddings, property and 2 websites). I rode the real estate wave until its demise and then rode the "weddings in Spain" wave for a few years.

Both were very lucrative.

Credit Crunch

Then , when we moved back to the UK in late 2007, we were just in time for the "credit crunch" in 2008. I momentarily turned OFF the wedding photography business and concentrated on my online business in affiliate marketing, product creation, training and mentoring with an online membership site teaching photography.

That made the move to the UK a breeze and saw us through the crunch until I built up my photography, video and aerial business alongside the online one. It's all about flexibility and willingness to adapt.

Plate Spinning

I'll give you one example of how plate-spinning works for me and you can see if it is something you can do locally in a niche you are experienced in or passionate about. 

One of my websites is so SEO friendly, it rises through the ranks for most search terms that I go for, especially locally. The web page that I built for aerial video is ranked very highly, and has been for a long time both locally and nationally. 

Because of my commitments to other projects such as My Net Prophet, I am not always able to take on the enquiries. For instance, I am part of a local drone training school so I built a web page promoting that business last year.

Partnering with Local Businesses

Whenever I can or when I am needed, I will do the flight assessments for new drone pilots. I also get a fair few enquiries for the main course so what happens is this. If I get an enquiry for the full drone school, I will speak to the customer and:

My involvement ends there.

Once the course is complete, the course instructor will then invoice me for the course fee less my agreed commission. Not only that, I am able to sell some pre-course drone training that will increase their chances of success for which I teach and get paid the full amount. 

This is a fully customisable, tweak-able and simple process once set up and could be applied to a multitude of businesses and niches. Get your thinking cap on... 

"Selling on" Enquiries

I also get enquiries for corporate drone work so if I can honor that enquiry, I will do the job myself. If not, I will "white label" that contract out to another drone operator nearby or near to the job location and split the income (normally weighted in their favour).

There is no reason why I cannot do this full time and make a commission for bringing clients to my "competitors/peers" using the power of my website and SEO. I know people that build websites for private dentists and get high commissions for forwarding those clients on. All you need to do is build a relationship with local businesses and away you go.

Once you have a few of these set up, you can spend the rest of your time uploading stock video, writing and selling eBooks, promoting some affiliate products, teaching courses either online via Zoom or offline in a hotel. You could, and should write more blog posts, build traffic levels and start charging for advertising.

However, what you might find is that one method you try starts to work and you then focus all your efforts on that be it eBooks, affiliate marketing or courses. There's not always the need to diversify too much if you build something that works well. Simply rinse, repeat and scale.

There are a lot more things you can do and most of them revolve around building a great looking website that gets found. Even if a website isn't entirely necessary, it can only help with marketing, sales, lead generation and so on. Having eBooks for sale or as part of a sales process alongside effective, professional promo videos will increase your chances of success 10-fold.

You will see in tomorrow's lesson why learning to build websites can be lucrative in other ways...

What I recommend is that you start to think seriously about the future and what is happening in the world right now. Not just the bad stuff but how the world is changing. Forbes estimate that by 2025, $1 Billion will be spent on self education every day around the world.

Right now we are at around $350-$400m.

No Time Like The Present - Don't Wait

Think about the amount of people unemployed in the world today and the students that are possibly competing with their parents for jobs. RIGHT NOW is the time to start thinking about growing your online presence and business. Maybe you could work on it as a family?

I know that my son has the entrepreneurial bug as he has already made money buying and selling on eBay. He is aiming to go to university next year to study business which is great. I would be more than happy once he has finished, for him to join the family business if he chose to do so.

The idea is not to panic or stress over it. Maybe start small like I did and learn as you go. It's the best way...and the cheapest. Think about what you know, what you want to know and what you are passionate about.

Doing something you love for a living or even in your spare time not only makes it fun, but it will inevitably make you more successful. Passion, experience and enthusiasm sells more than simply being a pushy, knowledgeable salesperson.

The 3 core skills (and all their off-shoots) I am teaching for now are more than enough to get you started. Make a list of what you think you would like to concentrate on and start to formulate a plan.

In the next two videos I am going to show you how to utilise those skills learned in My Net Prophet and make yourself an asset in the business world both online and off.

Plus, if you haven't seen it already, we give you a free lesson on Local SEO which will open your eyes to the possibilities of promoting your own business and those of other people.