Turn Knowledge to Profit: The Six Secrets of Successful Speakers, Coaches, and Authors

By Michael McCauley and Johnell McCauley

This is where entrepreneurs like you find the insights, ideas, and tools they need to earn more, make a bigger impact, and create the freedom to live the life others only dream about. Join us each week for conversations with successful entrepreneurs who reveal their secrets, identify key market trends, and share success strategies
you can use to grow your business, serve more clients, and earn what you’re truly worth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hybrid Global Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948181037

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Introduction

Several years ago, we were introduced to podcasting by Sandra and Kym Yancey, the founders of eWomenNetwork. They were getting ready to roll out a new service, the eWN Podcast Network, and they were looking for show hosts. They saw podcasting as another platform that could help eWomenNetwork members get their message out and build their businesses. Now, keep in mind that this was at a time before podcasts enjoyed their current popularity. By creating not just a show, but an entire podcast network, Sandra and Kym were definately ahead of the curve!

We had never really considered hosting a podcast, and at first we didn’t see why we would want to. But the more we thought about it, and the more we talked with Sandra and Kym about the visibility that our own podcast would bring, the more we saw the potential.

At the same time, I must admit that we were more than a bit apprehensive. After all, how were we going to fill a weekly show with content that was valuable to our audience? For that matter, how were we going to attract an audience at all!

Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know.

SARA BLAKELY

We did a lot of soul searching and ran the numbers. There were some sleepless nights too. In the end we overcame our initial trepidation and jumped headfirst into the water. And just like the stories our authors share about their businesses, our show evolved and developed over time. Because we were willing to take action, ours was one of the very first shows hosted by the network, and we have never looked back!

Through our association with the eWN Podcast Network, our show quickly developed a following, and the audience size continues to grow. Currently we are the number one hosts on the network, with more than one hundred thousand total listens!

Six Success Secrets from Our Guests

To date we have interviewed more than one hundred successful speakers, coaches, and authors for our show. Each of these entrepreneurs has built an amazing business, and what they have taught us through their interviews forms the core of this book.

"If you do what you’ve always done,

you’ll get what you’ve always gotten."

TONY ROBBINS

They each have their own story about how and why they created their business. Each one faced a set of challenges and took specific actions that were unique to them. Each of their businesses evolved in its own way as it has grown. This reinforces the idea that there is not a one size fits all approach to entrepreneurship. We have interviewed business owners who help their clients with finances, public speaking, relationships, networking, social media, branding, sales, mindset, business planning, writing, and personal image, just to name a few. Our guests are definitely a diverse group with a wealth of experience!

Even with their differences, there are some core, underlying strategies they all have in common. In fact, we found six core strategies that the majority of our podcast guests had used to drive their success. These are the six secrets we describe in the following chapters.

If any of these secrets are new to you, then we are excited to be introducing them to you in this book. Each one, taken by itself, can make a huge difference in the path of your business and your life. Taken together they can make you unstoppable!

If, on the other hand, you have heard one or more of these success secrets before, then we thank you for giving us this opportunity to review them with you again.

We don’t believe that anything happens by accident. There is a reason you picked up this book at this particular time. Ask yourself, Why am I reading this message right now? What could it mean for me and my business today? As you read through these success secrets, we encourage you to think about what each one could make possible for you and your business.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

ZEN PROVERB

We have applied these secrets in our own business with amazing results. They have helped us form a solid foundation that we build on each and every day. Hopefully they will help you form your own foundation and assist you on your journey to success.

How This Book Is Organized

To be truly successful in business (and in life), it is important for entrepreneurs to continuously feed their own internal growth and development. In addition, success would be difficult without also addressing the external influences that impact our businesses and our lives. Dealing with one while ignoring the other would only give you part of the solution. Looking both inward and outward gives you all of the pieces you need to solve the success puzzle.

We start with Success Secret #1: Entrepreneurs Monetize Passion. This secret addresses what we believe is the foundation of all success for entrepreneurs. You have to love what you’re doing, of course, but you also need to find a way to make money doing it.

Success Secret #2: Value Determines Worth looks at the value you provide from your client’s perspective. This is key to setting your price points, marketing your services, and connecting with your ideal clients.

Success Secret #3: Networks Create Leverage helps you get the word out. Nobody can do it alone, and this secret talks about the value of developing a thriving, growing personal network.

Success Secret #4: Vision Attracts Opportunity discusses the importance of looking for and leveraging opportunities as they present themselves, without losing your focus or becoming distracted by the next new thing.

Success Secret 5: Persistence Drives Results looks at what you can accomplish over time if you take small steps each day that move you toward your goals.

We finish with Success Secret #6: Mindset Generates Success. This secret talks about the importance of mindset and how having the right mindset is key to creating success.

For each secret, we give you our thoughts and experiences, along with thought-provoking questions and action steps to help you apply the secret to your business and life.

What makes this book unique, though, is that you don’t have to take our word for it. We went back to the more than one hundred entrepreneurs we have interviewed on our podcast and invited our top eighteen guests to share their journey with you. In their chapters, they share their insights and experiences and tell you how they have applied each secret to create success in their business and their life.

We are convinced that this book will help you create success, regardless of where you are in your journey. As you read through and contemplate each secret, we are confident that you will come to understand the pivotal role each one plays in entrepreneurial success. If you can master these six secrets and apply them to your business and your life, you will be well on your way to realizing your dreams.

Are you ready? Then let’s get started!

Success Secret #1

Entrepreneurs Monetize Passion

"People like to talk about passion. That’s great,

but you have to put it in a bucket that you can sell."

GARY VEE VAYNERCHUK

Success Starts with Passion

Following your passion is the foundation of success. You have to be passionate about what you’re doing to push through the challenges you’ll encounter as an entrepreneur.

Today, J.K. Rowling is well known as the author of the Harry Potter series. By almost any measure, she is successful. She is recognized on the street, became the world’s first billionaire author, and built a brand worth more than $15B (yes, billion). But it wasn’t always that way.

In 1994 J.K. Rowling had recently lost her mother, just gotten a divorce, was on government aid, and barely had enough to feed her new baby. She was desperately in search of a way to earn enough to pay the rent and keep the heat on. She had always loved to write, and she had a vivid imagination. As a child she often wrote fantasy stories that she read to her younger sister. But writing had always been just a hobby for her.

Then one day, while riding the train, she got the idea that would eventually become the Harry Potter series. She knew she had something special, and she was determined to turn her writing hobby into a money-making venture.

It took her uncountable hours, but three years later she had completed the first Harry Potter book. Her manuscript was rejected dozens of times, but she didn’t give up. She finally found a publisher that would take a chance on her book, and the rest, as they say, is history. J.K. Rowling is a great example of someone who had a passion and found a way to make money with it!

"Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes

from focusing on what excites you."

OPRAH WINFREY

But what if you don’t know what your passion is? What if you’re one of those people who just doesn’t know what they want to do for the rest of their life? Or what if you have more than one passion? What if your passion changes over the years? I want to assure you that if you don’t know what your passion is, or if your passion has changed from time to time, you’re likely more the rule than the exception!

I am not one of the lucky few who knew their passion early in life. My passion has changed at least five times since college (so far), and I have no idea how many times it changed before that! What I was passionate about in college and my early adulthood isn’t what I’m passionate about today. I have even gone through times when I didn’t really know what my passion was. And that uncertainty was more than a bit unsettling.

Maybe you have experienced something similar. Have you ever wondered what your true passion is? Or have you ever been unable to identify just one passion in your life? Or maybe your passion keeps changing, and that has caused you concern. For most of us, success is not a straight highway, but rather a winding road with lots of intersections. If this describes your life, see it as a blessing. It means that you get to enjoy the search for your passion!

Finding Your Passion

So, how do you find your passion? I believe that each of us is unique, and our cumulative life experiences are different from everyone else’s. It should be no surprise, then, that we each find our passion in our own unique way. My current passion came at a time in my life when I wasn’t happy with the path I had chosen. I had achieved success in my life, and I had a wonderful family, but I just wasn’t happy with where I was.

"When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment

in which it grows, not the flower."

UNKNOWN

At the time I was working with a coach who, like all the great coaches I have known, asked simple questions that caused me to think deeply. One day she noticed my unhappiness and commented on it. I told her that I just wasn’t passionate about what I was doing. She then asked me, Can you think of a time when you were happy? There was that simple question. I said I would need to think about it, so she gave me an assignment. Each time I thought of a time in my life when I was happy with my chosen career, she told me to write it down—describe what I was doing and how I felt. If possible, she asked that I identify exactly what I was doing at the time that made me happy.

I left our meeting feeling confident that I could probably think of times when I was happy, as she had asked me to do. I thought of a couple right away, but they seemed unrelated to one another. I was dubious that any common threads would be found running through the various times in my life when I was happy.

Not being one to give up, I took on the challenge. Over the next week I wrote in my journal about the times that I really enjoyed my job. And then I looked for common themes that ran through these times. What a surprise to discover that there was a common thread running through all of them!

When I met with my coach the following week, I shared the results of the exercise with her. I told her about the common theme I had found, and then she asked me another simple question: If that is really what makes you happy, then why don’t you just do that?

This process led me to identify patterns in my happiness. Knowing when I was happy and what I was doing at the times that I was happy resulted in the breakthrough that birthed our current company, Turn Knowledge to Profit. And now I love my life again!

Taking Action:

Finding Your Passion

The following action steps will help you identify your passion. We suggest that you purchase or create a Success Journal where you can write down your thoughts as you go through the action steps in this book. It is important that you actually write down the results. Neuroscience research shows us that there is a link between writing and information retention. The things that you write down are more easily remembered and put into action. This is not true of the things you type or simply think about.

As you go through the action steps below and in the following chapters, enjoy the journey!

1.Take out your Success Journal and title a page Finding My Passion.

2.Think back through your life and identify times when you were most happy with your work. Each time you remember a work situation that you really loved, describe it. What did you like about it? You don’t need to do this in one sitting. Keep your Success Journal handy and jot down ideas and thoughts whenever you have them.

3.Once you have identified several times when you loved your work, read through the descriptions and look for similarities. Is there something that they all, or at least most of them, have in common?

4.Write down what you think they have in common. Review what you have written periodically and see if you can refine it.

5.See if you can identify what the passion is at the core of these experiences. Your passion should be something that jumps off the page when you see it!

6.You may want to go through these steps again when you feel your passion is changing, or when you feel like something is missing as you walk along your chosen path.

Following Your Passion Is Not Enough

Following your passion is the foundation of success, but figuring out a way to make money while pursuing your passion is where the real magic happens.

There are a lot of speakers, coaches, and authors who will tell you that to be successful, you need to follow your passion. It does start with your passion, but just following your passion isn’t enough!

"Good people who earn good money

do