How To Turn Your Knowledge Into A Business: (Proven Strategies)
If you’ve ever wanted to start a business and weren’t sure where to begin, why not start with what you already know?
One of the most valuable things I’ve learned in over a decade of working with Dean Graziosi is to keep it simple.
So, if you’re wondering what type of business you should start, focus on what you already know and turn that knowledge into a digital information business.
By transforming the knowledge, skills, and experiences that you already possess into a business, you can build a scalable income source that will also make a difference.
So, if you’re ready to start, we’ll show you how to create an information business from the ground up using our simple strategy of building and scaling your information business.
And I guarantee it’s a lot simpler than you think.
Why An Information Business?
There are many different ways to start a business online, from providing professional services like copywriting and editing to selling physical products through an online store and even selling your knowledge about a topic or skill.
Yup, that’s right, you can sell what you know to people looking for answers you already possess.
With an information business, you’re getting a head start by tapping into what you already know more about than your audience.
What’s more, info products are easy to access, like a zero-entry swimming pool—you know, the kind you can just walk into, slowly getting deeper and deeper.
Cost To Startup A Knowledge Business
Using the tools you already have, namely your knowledge, makes starting up your knowledge-based business much cheaper than selling physical products, which have a ton of overhead, shipping, and labor costs associated with them.
The cost of a knowledge business is so much lower than that of a traditional business that you could start one right now with minimal investment or start-up costs.
Low Cost, High Profits
As a startup, it can be expensive to get started. That said, a knowledge business provides a huge opportunity because it’s low cost with the potential for high profits.
In fact, the startup costs for a digital business are significantly lower than those for traditional businesses, which require a lot of overhead, including inventory and storage, shipping, and labor costs.
With minimal upfront costs, knowledge-based businesses like online courses, e-books, and even coaching sessions offer a huge opportunity for phenomenal returns on investment.
Also, because a knowledge-based business has such a low cost for entry, you can create a product and sell it many times over, making it easy to scale without the burden of increasing inventory costs like with a traditional business.
Knowledge Is A Growing Market In Demand
With an estimated value of $370 billion (billion with a “B”) by 2026, digital businesses based on information and knowledge are projected to grow incredibly.
There are many reasons why a knowledge business is in such demand, ranging from affordability to scalability and flexibility. Digital products provide a humongous opportunity.
A real-world example is Amy Porterfield. Amy is a renowned digital marketing expert who used her knowledge about marketing and digital marketing specifically to create a highly popular and profitable course.
Her journey began with a simple, signature course, which she quickly scaled to a seven-figure business without taking on a larger workload or absorbing more infrastructure.
Want More Proof About The Incredible Opportunity Of A Knowledge Business?
If you’re still wondering about whether starting a knowledge business is right for you, consider these factors:
Ease of start-up
Earning potential
Scalability on a global level
Ease of entry: Starting a business can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
A knowledge business built on things you already know and that doesn’t require much inventory and overhead makes knowledge products an easy entry point to start selling.
Earning potential: The potential for digital businesses to earn is unparalleled for entrepreneurs.
As Amy Porterfield demonstrates, packaging your expertise and knowledge as a course or other knowledge product can produce a significant earning opportunity.
Scalability on a global level: Alright, transforming your knowledge into a business can be an easy starting point for a new business, and there’s a high earning potential; having a global reach to scale makes selling your expertise almost a no-brainer.
According to Statista, the largest market in e-services is online education, with a projected market volume of $185 billion for 2024.
If you’re interested in learning how to transform your knowledge and expertise into a business, let’s dive into how to get started and create a strategy for your success.
Identify Your Niche And Define Your Audience
To get started, take a moment to reflect on what you have some experience and knowledge about. Don’t get too focused on what you don’t know or that maybe you get concerned about “imposter syndrome.”
Don’t worry that you’re not the world’s greatest expert.
All you need is to know more about the audience you’re trying to serve. In other words, to someone, you are an expert and have a unique skill they don’t but want to learn.
Which brings up my next point–identify your potential audience and customers.
As you reflect on what you know, start to identify who your potential audience may be, what their pinpoints may be, and how you have answers to their concerns and solutions for their challenges.
The sweet spot is finding what you know, who may need that information, and how you can help them with solutions.
Let’s break down how to identify your niche and define your potential audience a little more:
Pinpoint What You Can Offer
When you’re exploring what expertise you can offer others through a knowledge business, start by making a list of subjects you know well and are passionate about.
This will be your niche, the specific subject matter, and the solutions you can offer your audience.
These could be things you’re confident in because of your work experience, a hobby, or whatever it is that you have unique insights that others may value.
Define Your Potential Customer
Next, who may want or need your insights from your list of potential topics?
Be as specific as possible about who you’re creating this product for and what demographics, pain points, needs, and challenges these individuals face.
The more specific you can be, the better and more authentic your content will be, and the more you’ll resonate with them.
Validate Your Ideas
Even though a digital information business has an easier entry point than traditional businesses, it’s still important to test and validate your ideas before jumping in.
Once you’ve identified your niche and defined your audience, you should test your ideas by engaging with your potential customers.
For example, if you create a knowledge product about your experience in the parenting niche, using your success stories with your family to develop good eating habits, a natural audience would be new parents looking for tips and tricks.
As you define who you want to serve, you want to ensure that your ideas will be as valuable to your potential audience as you believe they can be.
To do this, engage with your potential customers on social media, use surveys to get feedback, host webinars, and have one-on-one conversations to gauge interest.
Create The Right Product
After discovering what you may offer, defining who may be interested in it, and gauging interest, the next step is to create the right product for your potential customer’s needs.
The right product is one that you can confidently put together and that your audience would be interested in consuming. If you’re uncomfortable being on camera or hearing your voice, a video may not be the best way to create your content.
You should be confident in your content presentation because that’s going to be perceived by your audience.
There are a few popular digital product types you can consider, including:
Online Courses: Online courses are one of the best ways to get your knowledge out to potential customers.
You can create multiple course modules that people can consume at their own pace and develop additional resources for your customers to get an even more in-depth understanding.
Coaching and Consultation Services: If you’re more interested in helping individuals one-on-one, consider a consultation or coaching program where you can utilize your expertise to help others with a specific challenge.
The only issue is that a services program isn’t easily scalable since you must take a hands-on approach.
It’s much harder to scale a service business than it is with courses and videos that don’t rely on your presence to sell and operate unless, of course, you’re selling access, in which case it’s all hands on deck.
Membership Sites: If your knowledge is centered on an evolving topic, creating a membership site with a subscription model is a good option.
Offering a membership site allows you to add unique content, build on previous modules, and help keep users engaged.
E-books, Templates, and Guides: Providing shorter content or repurposing content from your digital course with e-books allows you to service a variety of individuals without requiring them to take a whole course.
Templates and guides are great options for individuals looking for valuable resources that can be used alone or in conjunction with your other products.
Planning For Success
Getting organized and formulating a plan for success is the surest way to build a foundation for your knowledge business and give it the best chance of succeeding.
Transforming your knowledge into a scalable product requires planning and hard work, and to get started, here are some of the steps to take:
- Create a plan
- Outline your content
- Develop the lesson plan
- Add value with engaging media
- Build-in feedback opportunities
Let’s go over these individually and see how you can transform what you know into a successful knowledge-based business.
Create A Plan
Starting a knowledge business is like starting any other business. Define what you will offer, who you will serve, where you will find and nurture leads, and how you will provide the deliverables.
By creating a plan that identifies what you’re offering and how you’ll get it to customers, you can begin to strategize the necessary steps, and it will even make shaping your content more efficient.
Outline Your Content
You want your content to flow, so chart it out with an outline. Don’t worry about making it a complete course; just brainstorm the different modules or videos you feel are needed to progress your course.
Decide the order in which you want your modules to appear, as this will make your outline and content flow and progress logically.
A good idea is to start with a loose outline that works backward from the final objectives you want for your students and what they should expect to achieve.
Working backward from the outcome objectives will help you create a more logical progression and determine the proper order of your modules.
Develop The Lesson Plan
Once your outline is diagrammed, the next step is developing the lesson plan. Your lesson plan should detail the specifics of each module and include a quiz and exam after each section to help test your student’s understanding of the module and the course as a whole.
A strong lesson plan will give your students clear objectives for each module and provide them with a strong sense of purpose throughout.
Increase Your Course’s Value WIth Engaging Media
To boost engagement with your material, include engaging media like videos, quizzes, or other interactive elements to help your students create connections with your course and aid in their understanding of the material.
People learn in various ways. Some are auditory, meaning they learn by listening. Others are visual, and some are tactile (or kinesthetic), while most are a combination of one of these.
Adding various elements to your course will provide opportunities for your students and resonate better with all of them.
Build-In Feedback Opportunities
Another element to include with your course is to build in different feedback and interactive opportunities.
By offering Q&As and interactive elements, you can gain valuable insights into the parts of your course that are performing well and the parts that you can improve.
When you create feedback opportunities, you increase your students’ engagement, which benefits your students and your chance to refine your course to be the best it can be.
Marketing And Launching Your Knowledge Business
Transforming your expertise into a business and creating the course is only part of what it takes to succeed.
A detailed strategy is essential for establishing your knowledge-based business as a success.
This strategy should include how you plan to find your audience, market your products, and launch your business for optimal impact.
One of the most successful launch ideas is to create a pre-launch buzz so that you know whether your product is one that your potential customers want and what they may be willing to pay for.
To create a pre-launch buzz, create enticing and engaging content, contests, and emails for your audience.
A little secret I’ve realized over the years is that people enjoy an event, so create your pre-launch as something they don’t want to miss out on.
Use exclusive offers, offer sneak peeks behind the scenes, and include a countdown timer to create a sense of excitement and a little FOMO (the fear of missing out) with urgency for your audience.
Day Of Your Launch
Carry the pre-buzz excitement into the day of your launch.
Just like the strategy you used to create excitement prior to the course launch, on the day you go live, create a launch-day strategy centered around the benefits your audience will receive from signing up for your course.
Marketing Your Information Business
If you’ve taken the steps necessary to define your niche, find an audience that wants the benefits you’re offering them, and create a buzz around your launch, the next step is marketing your business to a wider audience.
To market your new business for optimal impact, there are a variety of options for you to consider including the following:
- Content Marketing
- Leverage Your Sphere Through Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Paid Ads
- Affiliate Programs
- Webinars And Workshops
Using these concepts in any combination will help you find and nurture your audience, increase their awareness about your brand, expose your offers and solutions to them, and build trust in your business.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a way to reach an audience by creating and distributing content relevant to what the target audience is looking for and wants to consume.
When you use content marketing through blog posts, articles, and other digital content, you can help attract customers by delivering what they want to consume and building trust in your brand along the way.
Leverage Your Sphere With Social Media
You have a list of people that you already trust, and this is called your sphere of influence (SOI). Leverage your sphere by using social media.
Get people who already know and trust you to help spread your product launch by engaging with them on social media channels.
Consider creating contests that reward those in your SOI who like, share, and promote your product to people on their feeds and pages and provide you with online testimonials.
As your page gains traction, the algorithms on these platforms will rank it higher, driving more organic traffic to your page(s) and helping drive even more potential customers to you.
Email Marketing
In your pre-launch, incentivize people to offer their contact information in exchange for an exclusive deal or discount.
Once you’ve collected their information, create a series of emails that you can set to automatically send as your launch gets closer or to keep your target customers engaged with your brand.
Don’t spam them, however. Keep it personalized and relevant to what they may be looking for and how your digital product can help them in a positive way.
Make the emails focused on the benefits your audience will receive by signing up, subscribing, or purchasing your products.
Paid Ads
A good way to drive traffic is with paid ads, but this strategy comes with caution.
To get the type of traffic you want to take action on, you’ll need specific content written. If you have the budget, you may want to hire a professional copywriter or ad writer to help you.
Paid ads are great for creating a surge of traffic, but they can also become costly without a guaranteed return on ad spend.
Though you may get a lot of traffic from your paid ads, once you turn them off and stop paying, your traffic dries up.
A better option may be to focus on creating organic traffic growth by focusing on your content marketing and social media strategies.
Affiliate Programs
Consider affiliate programs to help market your product, reach a broader audience, and increase your revenue.
Affiliate programs are great sources of traffic, and they work simply. You pay a percentage of sales from an individual who drives people to your product.
It’s like having an advertising team for your product, and you pay them for bringing you customers. You could focus on affiliate programs with a wide reach or be more selective; it’s entirely up to you.
Webinars And Workshops
Another organic way to generate interest and market your products on a budget is to host free webinars and workshops.
The beauty of these formats is that they’re engaging events that allow you to interact with your audience and give them a sample of what to expect from your digital knowledge-based business.
These formats are win-win for you and your audience. You get an opportunity to showcase your expertise, and they get some value that helps build trust in your brand.
What Are You Waiting For?
If you’re ready to take what you know, transform it into a digital product, and are willing to make an impact in your community, what are you waiting for?
The Mastermind Business System gives you the insights you need to kickstart your information business. Its proven methods allow you to take immediate action and see immediate results.
What’s even better is that you’ll get 24/7 support and monthly live meetups with Dean Graziosi to help you gain cutting-edge solutions, strategies, and tactics to build, launch, and scale your knowledge-based business.
If you’re ready to transform your life and make an impact, you can test drive Mastermind Business School FREE for 14 days.
