How to Start a Location-Independent Consulting Business (Greatest Hits)

22:40And now it's a great source of leads. So in every video, I basically start by saying, hi, this is Paul today. I'm going to talk about this. And if you need help with Asana, you can use the link in the description to book an introductory call with me. And I just mentioned at the start of the video and at the end that I'm a consultant and you can get help. And so, yeah, it's worked out to be a very effective way of generating leads. Okay, that's awesome. And now there's, I mean, there's dozens and dozens of these videos. And one of the interesting things is you've expanded, not just hitching your cart to the asana bandwagon which was in hindsight obviously a great platform to go after but now you're saying okay i can help you with pipe drive i can help you with these other services as well kind of these popular software products and saying look i can be your go-to consultant for for this stuff when did you start branching out this was happening around early 2017 as well probably while i was away traveling yeah as you know maybe even i have to go back into my Pipedrive sales and look at when I did my first Pipedrive client, but probably end of 2016 or early 2017.

23:37And because I kind of validated the model with Asana, I just thought, OK, people are willing to pay to get help with these software tools. What else am I good at? And I just thought, what are the tools I use on a daily basis? MailChimp was one because I was doing my blog and podcast and building my audience. And I thought, well, I know a lot about MailChimp. Pipedrive was another one. I was using that at the job I was working at at the time. This is the job that I eventually quit. I was working as a mortgage advisor and Pipedrive was the CRM that we were using to track our leads. And I've always just been someone who's good at looking at a tool, figuring out the best way to use it, and then teaching that to other people.

24:09Basically, because Asana had proven to be so effective, I did the same. I set up landing pages for MailChimp and Pipedrive as well. Zapier as well came on after that, because a lot of people need help with Zapier when they're connecting these different things together. So really, again, it's just that intersection of these are tools that I know how to use, that I'm kind of passionate about. I love figuring out how to use them, and people are willing to pay. Arguably, the smarter thing to do maybe would have been to specialize in a vertical. maybe I could have done all CRMs because now somebody will come to me, they need a CRM, maybe Pipedrive is not the right fit, in which case I can't really help them.

24:38I can't help you with Zoho or HubSpot. So maybe a better way to go would have been to specialize in all CRMs. But I was like, you know what, I'm going to actually just pick the tools that I personally use every day, because they're the ones that I have the most experience with. I'm going to be keeping up to date with the updates to the products that are made. And now I've definitely got plenty of work to keep me busy. Yeah, that's an interesting angle. And it saves you from having to learn all these new systems that you don't really need. You're already saying, well, I'm using this other stuff in my business already, or I have experience in that.

25:10So why don't I just stick my flag in the sand and say, yeah, I can help you with that stuff as well. The CRM, interestingly enough, that was Wes Schaefer from the Sales Whisperer or the Sales Podcast. And what he would do is consult these sales teams on the, hey, what CRM should you use? And he would get his consulting fee and then he would set it up through my reseller program or through my affiliate program, like, okay, now I can get recurring commissions from these different software tools that I'm recommending, hey, based on my years of experience in the industry, like, and what you're telling me about your business, I think this is the best fit for you.

25:43And if you join through my affiliate link, blah, blah, blah. And so you'd built up that kind of side income stream to be pretty substantial when we spoke. So that's kind of an interesting way in this unique virtual kind of software consulting arena, oftentimes there's an affiliate component too, where you can, if you can add that to the revenue pie, you know, you played around with that at all? Yeah, definitely. This is a really exciting part of the equation as well. So when I got started, this wasn't really a factor. Pipedrive and Asana, which are the two that I really specialize in, they didn't even have a partner program when I was getting started.

26:17Since I've started, they've launched partner programs, which is basically where they recognize, hey, hey, we have these experts you can get help with. So that's the first thing is they just recognize you. You get like a badge you can put on your website and they recognize you as an expert. They have now as well, each of them come out with affiliate programs. So with Pipedrive, for example, you earn 20 % per user per month. So if I sign up an account that has 30 users, you're earning 30 times whatever their monthly fee there is they're paying. It could be$25 per month recurring. And that's for the life of the client.

26:48And it's a great model for Pipedrive because it means that I now, as the expert, have an incentive. Maybe a client works with me on a one-off project to set it up and train their team, but I have an incentive to keep in touch with that client because I'm earning that recurring commission every month. If they churn off and cancel their subscription, I'm not going to get that. So I have an incentive to keep in touch to make sure they're still using it. And they get essentially free support from me. So it's a great model, and that's been a really nice side benefit of doing the videos. In the videos, I say, if you haven't signed up to Pipedrive, use my referral link.

27:18you can get an extended trial and it's become a really nice side, very, very passive income that's now just growing every single month. Asana is the same. Their model, they're a bit newer with their affiliate model and they have slightly different terms and it works slightly differently, but it's, yeah, really nice little side benefit. Now you've got me thinking about all the different software tools that I use. I'm like, what could I do this for? This sounds awesome. Is the partner program, you kind of go through a little test or certification through the tool and then they say, okay, now you have the right to call yourself an Asana certified consultant?

27:49Or how does that work? Yeah, usually they will have, I mean, each program is different, but usually they'll have some kind of certification program. I did the Zapier one. Theirs was intense. They had a pretty intense test. And you've got to sink a few hours into that. So most of them will have a certification program just to prove that you know what you're doing. Before they recognize you as an expert, they want to make sure you know what you're doing. And assuming you pass, yeah, they'll say, right, yeah, we recognize you as an integration partner. Like Pipedrive, for example, they have different levels.

28:13You can just be an affiliate, which means you can earn a commission for referring, basically being a salesperson, referring leads to them. But I'm what's called a partner or an integration partner. So I actually help their customers to set up and use the tool. I'm on a slightly different model. I own the recurring commission, whereas the affiliate is, I think, you just earn a percentage for a year. But yeah, obviously, to get that certification, you have to pass their test and they give you the badge that you can put on your website. And it's just that nice little stamp of approval that you can show off.

28:41Yeah, it's like you're official. I remember with Google AdWords back in the day, oh, you're a Google AdWords certified professional. It's like, oh man, you must be legit. So there's another way to build the credibility. Yeah, exactly. You put it on your landing page. I put it in even my YouTube thumbnails was something I did. Only recently I had to go back and I updated all my videos. I was like, right now that I've got the badge, I updated the thumbnail on every single video to put my badge in. So people know when they're clicking through those, if they search Asana, they're going to pick the one that says certified pro on it.

29:10Oh, okay. So you can update the thumbnail, not necessarily the underlying video. Correct. Yeah. Because you can go back and you can edit the metadata and the thumbnails whenever you want. That's one of the slightly tricky things with YouTube is you can't update old videos. So some of the videos, you know, I've been out years ago. The Asana interface has changed since then. I'd love to be able to redo the video with a new with the new interface. But you have to upload it as a brand new video, which kind of has its challenges. But yeah, I just basically once I got the badge, the Asana Certified Pro, I went on.

29:37I use Canva, which a lot of people use to make their social and video thumbnails and things. And I just, yeah, basically did the titles and put my badge on all of them just so that when you search in search results, it just pops out that I'm the expert. Yeah. Okay. Well, this is exciting stuff because maybe you have a software that you use for your day job, for your work. It's like, well, shoot, maybe I can turn around and the online expert, the virtual consulting expert for the same thing on the side. Maybe it's some up and coming software tool that you're using for your side business already.

30:05and here's another way to add some even more side income. So for Paul, you've got the Google stuff, the Clarity stuff, the YouTube stuff, the affiliate stuff on top of the YouTube stuff. Is anything else driving kind of initial client conversations for you today? Referrals, but referrals aren't that significant. But yeah, I mean, when a client's really happy with me and they come across another business owner that needs help, they'll often refer me, which is really nice. And that's obviously a really warm lead that you're getting. But Google and YouTube would be the biggest ones. What else? It's funny, like with doing my blog and my podcast, I sort of have two halves to my business.

30:40There's the blog and the podcast and the whole content side of my business where I'm talking about productivity and self-improvement and a bit of business as well. But that's really with the goal of I have sponsorship revenue on my podcast. It's really with the goal of promoting or building an audience, building my newsletter list. And then I have some info products that I sell, like I have a productivity toolkit. I have a consulting program that teaches people how I've basically built my consulting business. That whole side of the business is really aimed at building my audience, selling those products.

31:05The consulting is quite separate, but there is that overlap now because sometimes people will come onto my list. They see that they discover me online somehow through a podcast, through Google Organic. They sign up to my newsletter. And because I'm very open and transparent with what I do and my process and how I work, they then go, oh, this guy's an expert in Pipedrive or Asana. And so I get some people on my email list just contacting me to get support with these tools as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One bit of advice we were given in the past was to hang out in the product support forums or the subreddit for a specific product and answer user questions there to try and establish expertise.

31:43Have you ever done any of that? Or is that not worth your time? Yeah, no, thank you for reminding me. That was something I do. I do it less frequently now because quite honestly, right now I'm just in a place where I have so many inbound leads. I don't really have to ever do any cold outreach or chase work, which is a nice position to be in. But because I'm pretty much booked up like two weeks in advance with introductory calls and the clients that I'm currently working with as well, I don't have to go looking for the work as much. But yeah, I do, when I can, get into the Asana forum. They have a support community.

32:13I spent a lot of time in there in the early days. Yeah, just being helpful and just answering people's questions. And I just had a little kind of tagline at the end. You know, if you need help with Asana, you can book an introductory call here. It was the same thing. And Twitter was actually the other one. So I use TweetDeck. And on TweetDeck, you can set up these columns to be different search results. I had one for mentions of Asana. So when somebody would tweet about Asana, maybe they were tweeting at Asana to get help. I would often get in there first and answer their question. And just try and be generally helpful and answer people's questions.

32:42So that was another one that I, again, I don't do it as much now. but definitely in the early days, answering people's questions on Twitter and the forums as well, definitely. Sorry, say that again. What was the tool you were using to monitor the Twitter mentions? TweetDeck. It's just a web application. You sign in with your Twitter account and you can set up these columns for the different things that you want to see. So you could have a column for just your timeline, like all the people you're following, all the tweets you normally would see. And you can have a column for your notifications, see who's liking your tweets and replying.

33:09But you can set up custom searches. So you can say, I want to see mentions of this keyword or mentions of this account. And so I would have them set up for Asana and Pipedrive. And so anytime somebody mentions Pipedrive or Asana, I would see that tweet come up. And then I can just jump in and answer and reply to that tweet really quickly. Hey, just wanted to take a moment to thank our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. A lot of side hustlers suffer from what if-itis. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't have the skills? What if I pick the wrong path? But one thing 100 % of our amazing guests have in common is they took their shot.

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34:18Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. Okay, that's really cool. So tons of different ways to kind of get in front of the target customers and all with being helpful first and then the call to action of like, hey, if this is a fit, if you need extra help, let's book a call. Can you tell me how those calls typically go and what the close is like, what the pitch is like for now I would like you to pay me? Yeah, sure. It's definitely something that I still today trying to improve and always trying to get better with.

34:58So typically on the first call, I'll start by just asking them a bit about themselves. Like, where are you? How did you find me? I always ask how they find me. And that's something I can put into Pipedrive as well so I can track over time, like, how am I getting leads? And then I'll just say, Nick, hey, give me your brain dump. Tell me about your business. Where are you at with Asana right now? Like, what do you need help with? Just give me your brain dump because people have probably got a bit of a spiel of some thoughts in their head of just, this is what everything I want to get off my chest.

35:20So I let them kind of ramble for a bit and talk about how they're using Asana, what they need help with. I'll then try and ask some kind of specific questions. And this is called having a why conversation. I learned this from a really smart guy, Jonathan Stark, he's talked a lot about hourly billing versus value pricing and stuff. And he talks about this idea of having a why conversation. You ask the person, why do you want to help with Asana? Why do you even need help? Why is this a priority right now? And they'll say something like, oh, well, you know, we've been having trouble with communication and we really need to streamline that.

35:48We don't really have a place where we can see all of our work. So you're just trying to understand their motivation a bit more. And then you can ask questions like, well, why do you want to work with me? I mean, you could go and learn this all for free online. Why do you want to work with me and they'll say well you know i want to save some time and i've seen your videos and you know what you're doing so i want you to just train my team as you kind of probe like this a little bit more to really try and unpack the motivation around why me why now why asana why is this a priority and in a sense it sounds a bit scary because it sounds like you're trying to talk them out of working with you which you sort of are because you're like well if it's not a good fit when there's no point of talking but usually what you're actually getting them to do is you're actually getting them to justify to themselves why they need to work with you.

36:28So it's like, why do you want to work with me? And they're telling you, well, I want to work with you for this reason. Why do you need to help with a sign? Well, it's because I want to save time. So you're actually, you're getting them to sell me to themselves in a way. And so it's a really nice approach. Through these conversations, I'm basically trying to firstly work out what type of customer is this and kind of what end of the spectrum, the pricing spectrum are they on? Do they have a big team? Do they need lots of training? Is this going to be like a gig that's going to last a few months or is this someone that needs like a few hours of support that is on the lower end and so then from there i'll talk them through some options and i'll say you know i have my audit and training packages and people may have already seen that as well or i'll say you know it sounds like based on what you're trying to do and you've got a big team here and we need to create a lot of different templates and things in asana you probably need my fixed price kind of proposal option so i'll kind of talk them through what each of those involves if it's the audit if i can i'll try and get them to book the audit on the call and actually get a date on the calendar if i can and really get that commitment on the call.

37:19It doesn't always happen, but it's great if you can. With the proposal option, I'll go away, I'll prepare a proposal, let's get on a call next week, and I'll schedule the call while I have them on the phone, and I'll say, let's get on another call next week for half an hour, and I'll present this proposal to you. I've only started doing this in the last six months, and it's worked really well, because what I was doing is just sending the proposal via email, and hoping they respond. Which has worked for me for the last, like, one and a half years, but since now adopting this presentation call approach, I found it to be really effective.

37:46So I'll get on a call and I'll talk them through the proposal. This is what you get with each option. And so rather than them just kind of receiving it in their inbox and having to kind of make sense of it on their own, if they have questions, I'm there, I can answer their questions, which inevitably they will have. And so it's just a really nice way for me to be able to present the option. And then hopefully by the end of that second call, they can then go, well, I have a few options in my proposal. They can say, well, option two sounds really good. That's probably the one we're going to go with.

38:11And again, ideally, we book a time where we're actually going to start and I'll send through payment instructions and things like that. But at the very least, the second call is just a really nice opportunity to talk them through that proposal, deal with any questions or concerns they might have, rather than just doing it all via email, where often people will just receive the proposal and then you might not hear from them again. So it's just nice to do that on a second call in person. Yeah. And we should probably know these are, I imagine, several thousand dollar packages. You put a lot of effort in up front to make this sale.

38:40Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing as well is I kind of realized over the years, I didn't start charging five, six thousand. It was more like, I think I started around fifteen hundred or two thousand. It's a lot cheaper. And it was easier to close a sale at that price, just sending them a proposal by email. As I've added more value into my proposals, come up with more comprehensive packages, increase the scope of my support and generally just try and increase my prices to get the higher price points. You can't just have a 30 minute conversation and send a proposal and then get paid$6 ,000 Like having that second call is, yeah, is kind of, I think, required to, again, build that credibility, build that trust, deal with any concerns they have in order to kind of get those higher prices.

39:18Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of parallels between this business and the business we heard of Dr. Shirog Shimasian a few weeks ago. He was a medical school admissions consultant and started out. People discovered him through these long form Google articles, much like they're discovering you through YouTube. But there's always like this level of personalization, this level of customization. Yeah, I can follow your advice and I could probably do this myself. But like, I want some handholding. I want to figure out the exact custom templates for me. And for that, it's this really high ticket consulting, especially in med school, like a very high stakes type of offer.

39:52And similar for these companies, if they can figure out how to make their employees 15 % more efficient for the next year, like that's worth a huge amount to them, too. Have you ever run into any pushback on, well, yeah, you're in New Zealand, we're in San Francisco. Do you fly here? Do you deliver this all over Skype? Like you ever run into pushback over like delivering this work remotely? Very rarely, very rarely. Occasionally, and I'll say this is probably, I don't know, one in 50 maybe or one in 100. I can't even remember when I had the last one. But people will sometimes say, oh, look, we're looking for someone local.

40:26We want someone to come into our office and meet us in person and guide us through it in person. So that's very rare. Usually when I ask them the very first question, hey, where are you? And they'll say, I'm in San Francisco. And I'll be like, oh, great, I'm in New Zealand. We're actually really close in time zones. We're like a whole day ahead. We're actually really close. Especially in our summer, the time difference gets really, really short. So it's usually not a concern. I think in this day and age, most people now are pretty accustomed to the idea of working with virtual staff. Like a lot of the businesses I work with have a virtual or a component of their workforce is virtual.

40:57And so they're used to it. Everyone's now pretty used to using Zoom or Skype or whatever to do calls. And so, yeah, it's generally not a concern. And it does get tricky when people from Europe and the UK approach me because we're looking at a 12 hour time difference and that can be tricky. But for New Zealand, Australia and the States and Canada, it's not too bad. OK, nice. One thing I've noticed on your site is there's the consulting side. There's also the product side and not the Paul Miner's productivity guy type of products. And like now I'll teach you how to start your own virtual consulting business type of products.

41:27but like related to the software that you're consulting on, like how to automate pipe drive, 500 bucks, click here to buy it. Is that become a significant piece of the pie for you? Like are people buying that stuff? Yeah, that's something I released earlier this year. So it's actually been live for only a couple of months. And yeah, like I've sold it a few times now. Again, some people find it organically and just pay for it with me never having a conversation, which is great. What I've really used those products for is more as upsells and additional value. so with the audit and training i think i said before yeah they range from about 450 to a thousand and i tell people if you book one of my audit packages you'll get my how to automate pipe drive videos at a discount at 20 off or with the i have an asana video it's like a 90 minute getting started with asana video i actually give that away for free so if you book one of my audits you'll get this video for free it's normally 150 bucks but if you buy it as part of my audit you get it for free i use it as either like a freebie like additional value you will get by working with me or I provide it at a discount, something like that.

42:23And it's just a nice little add-on that I can use to provide the customer with additional value. It's like really good content. In fact, the automating pipe drive videos, that's all the stuff that I do, which I charge thousands of dollars for, but you can just learn how to do it in the videos. And rather than me give you a fish, you can kind of teach yourself to fish. And so it's a really nice way for me to deliver additional value, but it's no extra cost to me because it doesn't require any additional hours for me to give them the videos. I can command, again, a bit of a higher price point. They get some value.

42:52But because it's digital, it's a product, it's a very passive way to be able to increase my rates and deliver that extra value. If somebody just comes to the site and buys it, what's the software or sales system you're using to sell and deliver that? Yeah, I use an e-commerce tool called Easy Digital Downloads. They're great. Their support's fantastic. I use it to sell all my products, my toolkit and everything. And yeah, it's just a really nice plugin that works really well. So you can add, I create the sales page using OptimizePress, which is the page builder that I use to do most of my sales pages and landing pages.

43:23And then you can just add a payment link. So it's just a special link with some query parameters that says, right, this is the product we're adding to the cart, the pricing option they've chosen. And they go to the cart and you can set up PayPal and Stripe and Bitcoin payments and whatever you want. Yeah, it's a really good plugin. And actually, the good thing about EDD is compared to some other ones, they actually don't charge. I think the core easy digital downloads plugin is completely free. Okay, cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Always curious what tools and tech are really driving this stuff behind the scenes.

43:51What's next for you this year? What's got you excited? That's a really great question. I wrestle with that a lot. I don't know what's next. It's my short answer. It's sort of, I've been really inspired by Paul Jarvis's work around, he wrote his book earlier this year, The Company of One, and really just challenging this idea of growth. Are you familiar with Paul Jarvis? Yeah, Paul was on the show a couple months ago. Oh, sorry, I had no idea. Okay, great. Yeah. So like, he's someone that really resonates with me. This idea of like, you don't have to grow, like you don't have to hire a team because right now I'm really enjoying just kind of being on my own.

44:19I have my wife helps me with a few things. I have a virtual assistant who helps me with some stuff as well, but I'm not particularly motivated to like grow an agency. And you've got a new baby to take care of. Well, yeah, that too. So I'm not particularly motivated to like grow a big agency. I earn like a really good income now that supports us really well. Yeah, right now I'm pretty happy with the status quo. Fair enough, man. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I like Paul Jarvis. He had some awesome soundbites during that interview, just like, you know, questioning growth for the sake of growth.

44:47And most goals are fake. Do I need a million dollars? No, I don't need a million dollars. It was a thought-provoking conversation for me, at least, and hopefully for listeners, too. But in any case, this Paul, paulminers.com. Check him out. Excellent content on the productivity side. That's how we first connected. If you're interested in this virtual consulting business, which, you know, I've got my gears turning a little bit because I think there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do with it that you have been doing with it. I encourage you to download the free virtual consulting blueprint at paulminers.com slash blueprint.

45:18You'll find benefits of this business model, some mistakes to avoid, hopefully shortcut your learning curve a little bit. Again, paulminers.com slash blueprint. Paul, let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. I would say the biggest thing for me, I don't want to sound too cliche or like a broken record, but it's just to keep going or keep going, keep trying. I know in the early days for me, I spent years while I was still working, listening to all the podcasts, consuming all the content about how to build an online business. I would try so many things like doing webinars and digital products and things and affiliate marketing and just trying to find that way of hitting that number, that$3 ,500 a month, just so I could quit my job.

45:57And I know it's really hard in the beginning. You don't have a lot of knowledge or experience. It's hard to know what works. my biggest advice is please don't give up i can guarantee if you work at it long enough if you keep learning listen to podcasts like this and trying to upskill yourself as much as you can and just keep trying new things throw the spaghetti at the wall see what sticks you will eventually find the success that you're looking for so that's my biggest advice because it can take some people find success really quickly for me it was a bit longer and you definitely have to stick with it because i see a lot of people now who will have an idea try and start a business but really they only give it a go for like a few weeks or a few months and then they're like oh oh, it's not really working.

46:31This isn't for me. You just have to have that persistence to keep trying new things. Maybe a bit cliche, but just be persistent and stick with it. Well, I appreciate that. And eventually you will find some sticky spaghetti. But it parallels your advice. I just looked this up from the 2016 episode. The advice was to persist. So parallels nicely with keep going because that's the thing. And an entrepreneur in motion tends to stay in motion. So I encourage you to get started and most importantly to stay started. Again, paulminers.com. Paul, thank you so much for joining me and we'll catch up with you soon.

47:07Now we're catching up with Paul several years deep into his journey. So I think it's important to note that this didn't happen overnight. It's been a process of putting out content, seeing what resonates, building products, making offers, continually tweaking and learning and improving. And I think that's perhaps the most common trait among Side Hustle Show guests is that they never stop learning. All right, my top three takeaways from this call with Paul. Lots of takeaways from this episode. But here are my top three. Number one is a software or tool plus consultant or expert. Stake your claim to something that people are already using and searching for help on rather than, yeah, well, I'm a life coach or I kind of help people eat healthier.

47:50I'm not saying that those types of businesses aren't helpful and that's not something that people need. But I'm saying I think you're going to have a much easier time establishing credibility and landing clients by taking Paul's approach. I'm an Asana expert, or I'm a pipe drive consultant. I think that's a really powerful strategy that has clearly worked well. And the cool thing is new software tools are coming out all the time. If you're an early adopter or even just an excited adopter, there's a chance to become a resource for that. Another important note is that Asana had been around for years before Paul jumped in and staked his claim to it.

48:25It wasn't like he was in on the ground floor here, but he was still able to carve out some space and establish himself. So that's a software or tool plus consultant or expert, you know, try and brand yourself and hitch a ride on one of these popular platforms. Takeaway number two is to get found. I really loved all the juicy marketing ideas Paul shared, everything from the super specific Google AdWords ads to the Clarity.fm directory, helping out on product forums, responding to questions on Twitter, his own YouTube content. It's not enough today to just set up a work with me page on your website and wait for customers to find you.

49:03I think you should absolutely have that, especially down the road, maybe have some traction. But he was proactive about getting in front of his target customers in a number of different ways and it paid off. Your approach might vary based on your niche, but I think we can take inspiration from Paul's tactics, A very effective combination of both push and pull marketing. Pull being I can attract customers to me with my content and getting discovered in search. And push, important note, without being pushy, by proactively finding people publicly asking for help. That's takeaway number two. How are you going to get found?

49:37And takeaway number three is think about how content can turn into cash flow. This might be easier in the software space than in other verticals, but I've seen people do it with physical products through affiliate programs and also digital products, either of their own creation or through affiliate partnerships. And I think Paul's done a great job of this. He's set himself up as an expert in several areas, and that's led in a very organic way to affiliate or referral revenue for the various tools, plus the creation of his own digital products. Is there a way to bundle up your service or expertise into a book, into a course?

50:14This is what I did several years ago with the Small Business Website Checklist book. I was doing a bunch of video website audits on Fiverr and kept running into some common mistakes. Like here are some things that a lot of people are getting wrong with their websites. So I put together the Website Checklist book as an extra product option. And in certain cases, doing these website audits, I'd make an affiliate referral to a WordPress support service. Like, hey, you're running WordPress. us. We just identified several changes you might consider making to your site. Here's a top rated service that can help you get that done.

50:47Very natural recommendation. Is there a way to recommend other tools or software or products that are going to help your audience, your business? This is a really exciting incremental revenue stream, I think, for any service business, any type of consulting, freelancing type of business. Once again, paulminers.com and head on over to sidehustlenation.com slash paulminers to download the free PDF highlight reel from this episode with all of Paul's top virtual consulting tips, or you should be able to access that through the link in the episode description of your podcast player app as well. That's it for me.

51:22Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen, and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.