Spirit of the Entrepreneur: How and Why to Make Money Doing Workshops

Garrett conducting his first workshop in the olden days.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that most of you reading this have faced some dissatisfaction with what you have to do to make money. This is a common ailment in civilized cultures around the world. Hillary Clinton once commented that modern forms of work have become an epidemic affecting millions of people.

Every individual has to face this disease on his or her own terms. You have to decide if you feel truly satisfied with what you do to make money. If you’re one of the lucky or valiant few who’ve found a job you really like, I applaud you. But, if you’re like me, and you have a hard time working for other people in situations you’d rather not be in, I have some good news for you.

Going out on your own to do freelancing and/or starting a business is way easier than you might think. We’ve almost all been trained in school to be good workers, to follow orders and to leave most of our important life decisions in the hands of others. Unfortunately, not everyone has your best interests in mind.

I stumbled into freelancing and doing business almost by accident. It started with helping people with their writing projects and editing papers for others. Then, a friend turned me on to some online content-production companies who pay freelance writers. Finally, I undid myself so much and fell in love with the process of breaking free that I knew I had to start a business passing on my knowledge and experience to other individuals like myself.

The process took a number of years, and I failed many times. Those failures all became fertilizer for my next attempts, until finally, I started making it work. A lot of things in life work that way.

The Spirit of the Entrepreneur

Check out this video I made about the Spirit of the Entrepreneur and how to make money doing workshops. After you watch the video, read on, and I’ll go into a bit more detail about getting paid to do simple workshops and teaching people how to do things you love to do.

To find out more about the Esozone Codex and The Spirit of the Entrepreneur training, click on the links in this sentence.

For more detailed step-by-step instructions, check out the Art of Not Giving a Fuck guide to business and work to establish a new foundation for your efforts, aimed at personal freedom and self-defined success, and the NGF Workshop on how to put on your own workshops for money.

I’ve covered the following points before, but they bear repeating over and over in as many places as possible.

The Basic Formula of Making Money Doing Workshops

1. Identify Hobbies, Interests and Passions

It’s a simple as taking a look at what you get excited about. What kinds of hobbies do you spend your time on? Even if you enjoy searching around online, there are people who would love to learn how to do it. Make a list of 11 things you like to do. Don’t worry yet if those things are profitable or not, we’ll deal with that later.

2. Make a list of types of people who might want to learn what you love to do.

For each item you listed in #1, make a list of the types of people who might pay you to teach them how to do the things you’re passionate about doing. Get as specific as you can with these types. Are they 65 year old women who want to learn how to use email, facebook and skype to stay in touch with family? Are they 35 year old men who are making $100,000 per year at office jobs who want to learn how to break out as freelance consultants?

Identify who these people are and where they spend their time, online and off.

3. Pre-Test the Ideas for Profitability. (Thanks to Ramit Sethi for his teachings on this one.)

For each group of people you’ve identified above, ask the following questions:

1. Are they able to pay for your services?

2. Are they willing to pay?

4. Go to where the groups of people spend time and talk to them.

If you answered yes to the above two questions in, choose your favorite idea of those that passed the test. Make a list of places the target audience spends their time. Go there and meet those people. Tell them about your ideas and potential services. If you can reach them online, send them emails and find out what you can do for them by getting clear on what it is they really want. More advanced stages of this include setting up a website, online surveys and research, and other techniques. For now, just go find people and talk to them about what they want in relation to the skills, knowledge, and resources you have to offer.

Find out if these people really want what it is you have to offer.

5. Build a workshop, service, and/or product out of your idea.

This can be a workshop like the one provided in the Esozone Codex, it can be a how-to PDF, or it can be an individualized service like teaching people how to write better, use computers or how to workout for maximum weight loss and muscle tone. Make sure you get excited about what you’re doing. Your excitement will add great value to your product or service.

6. Tell People About Your Workshop

Set a date, time and location for your workshop. We can help you with all the details in a Spirit of the Entrepreneur session, the Esozone Codex, and personal undoing sessions and training. Basically, you go to the places where your target market spend time, find out what they really want, craft an offer based on your findings, and put your offer in front of them. Talk to folks about it. Put up flyers. Put ads on local listings online and in local papers. Find teachers, leaders, and other network hubs in your market and create win-win situations for them, their clients, and yourself. Be creative and come up with other ways to share your offering with people.

It’s as simple as that!

It really is that simple. Trust that you’ll learn and adapt as necessary along the way. If you ever have any questions, find people who are doing something similar to you and ask them how they do it. You can learn anything you need to know, just like you did when you were learning about your hobby, interest or passion. Once you make sharing your knowledge and value with other people one of your passions, making money will excite you just as much as your other interests.

A Very Cool Secret…

A cool secret about all of this is:

When you make money doing something you love, you win at every stage of the game. You’ll always be satisfied with what you’re spending your time on. When the money starts to flow, it feels even better. You’ll know that for every dollar you make, you have added value to someone else’s life, and your own.

Why Make Money Doing Workshops?

Here’s why:

1. You get over your fears of public speaking and performance.

2. You get to directly interact with other people who share your interests and passions.

3. You learn the material you teach in much greater depth and detail than you would otherwise.

4. It’s a lot of fun.

5. You can increase the value of what you’re teaching and start charging a lot more for your workshops as you gain experience.

There are a hell of a lot of other benefits you’ll get out of putting on workshops, but I want you to experience those for yourself.

Best of luck in your journey of expansion and fulfillment.

Enjoy,

-Garrett