Your Next Income Stream Might Already Be in Your Head
We spend a lot of time thinking about what we need to learn next.
Another skill.
Another piece of software.
Another certification.
Another course.
Another piece of gear.
There’s nothing wrong with learning. I’ve been doing this for more than 40 years, and I’m still learning.
But at some point, I think we need to ask a different question:
What can I do with what I already know?
Because your next opportunity might not require learning something new.
It might require looking differently at something you already know how to do.
We Forget How Much We’ve Learned
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking about something I’ve noticed after spending most of my life working in audio.
The longer you do something, the easier certain things become.
You walk into a room and hear a problem.
You open a Pro Tools session and immediately see that it’s a mess.
You hear a vocal and know the problem probably isn’t EQ.
You recognize a client who is going to be difficult before the session ever starts.
Eventually, those things don't feel like special knowledge anymore.
They just feel normal.
And that's where we can make a mistake.
We start thinking:
Everybody knows that.
No.
Everybody in your world might know that.
You know it because you spent years learning it.
Maybe You Don’t Need Another Skill
Most of us have been conditioned to keep adding things.
If business is slow, learn something else.
If we aren't getting enough clients, buy something.
If we're unsure what to do next, take another course.
Again, I'm not against any of those things.
But before you go looking for the next thing, take inventory of what you've already got.
You may not need another skill.
You may need another way to use the skills you already have.
One Skill Can Solve More Than One Problem
Let's say you're a good mixing engineer.
The obvious way to make money from that skill is to mix records.
But that's not the only thing you could do with that knowledge.
You could critique someone else's mix.
You could help a newer engineer figure out why their mixes aren't translating.
You could teach somebody your workflow.
You could run a workshop.
You could create a mixing checklist.
You could consult with someone setting up a home mixing room.
Same knowledge.
Different ways of using it.
Or maybe you've been using Pro Tools for 15 years.
You know how to organize sessions, route signals, comp vocals, edit tracks, prepare files and troubleshoot problems.
None of that feels particularly remarkable anymore.
Until you sit next to someone opening Pro Tools for the first time.
Suddenly, the things you do without thinking are exactly the things they're struggling to understand.
That's worth paying attention to.
This Doesn't Mean You Need to Make a Course
Whenever people start talking about making money from what you know, it seems like the conversation immediately becomes:
“Make an online course!”
That's not what I'm saying.
Knowledge can become all kinds of things.
A service. Consulting. Coaching. Tutoring. A workshop. A template. A checklist. A guide. A critique.
Or maybe the best offer is simply:
“I know how to solve that problem. Let me do it for you.”
That's how most of us started working in audio in the first place.
Someone needed something done.
We knew how to do it.
So we did it.
Pay Attention to What People Ask You
Here's one of the easiest ways to discover knowledge you might be overlooking.
Ask yourself:
What do people already ask me for help with?
What question have you answered 20 times?
What do people call you about?
What are you constantly explaining?
What problem gets handed to you because everyone says:
“Ask Donny. He knows how to do that.”
That's a clue.
Sometimes other people recognize the value of our experience before we do.
That’s What Happened to Me
I spent most of my career working in audio.
Recording.
Mixing.
Producing.
Running a studio.
Working with clients.
But doing those things for decades taught me much more than how to operate audio equipment.
I learned how to run sessions.
How to deal with clients.
How to organize projects.
How to build systems.
How to troubleshoot.
How to price things.
How to recover when something goes wrong.
How to teach what I know to someone else.
Eventually, I started helping other people with those things.
I didn't wake up one morning and decide:
“I'm going to become a business teacher.”
It grew naturally out of problems I'd already spent years solving.
The Know-How Method
That's really where this idea I've been calling The Know-How Method comes from.
It isn't about pretending to be an expert.
It isn't about learning something last Tuesday and selling a course about it on Friday.
It's almost the opposite.
Start by asking:
What have I actually done?
What have I actually learned?
What problems have I actually solved?
And then:
Who could that help?
Real experience.
Real knowledge.
Real problems you've actually solved.
That's the foundation.
Try This Simple Exercise
Pick one thing you know how to do really well.
Don't worry about whether it's worth money yet.
Write it down.
Then answer three questions:
1. Who struggles with this?
2. What problem does my knowledge solve for them?
3. How could I help them solve it?
Don't start with:
“What can I sell?”
Start with:
“Who can I help?”
The business part can come later.
Here’s an Example
Maybe you're really good at recording vocals in a home studio.
Who struggles with that?
Singers.
New engineers.
Podcasters.
Voiceover artists.
Home-studio owners.
What's their problem?
They can't get their recordings to sound the way they want.
How could you help?
You might record it for them.
You could review their setup.
You could help them choose equipment.
You could teach them microphone technique.
You could build them a recording template.
You could help them improve their room.
One piece of knowledge suddenly creates several possibilities.
But there's an important next step.
Don't Build Anything Yet
This is where people can get themselves into trouble.
They discover something they know and immediately start building.
Website.
Logo.
Course.
Sales funnel.
47 modules.
Don't.
Talk to somebody first.
Find someone who actually has the problem.
Help them.
See what happens.
Find out whether the problem you think exists is actually a problem people care about solving.
Then you can decide what to build.
Solve the problem before you build the business around the problem.
You Don’t Have to Leave Audio
None of this means you need to quit being an audio engineer and become something else.
Maybe what you know creates another income stream.
Maybe it helps during slow months.
Maybe it becomes another service inside your existing business.
Maybe it makes you better at the business you already have.
Or maybe you discover that you simply enjoy helping people with something you've learned.
That's okay too.
The point isn't that everything you know needs to become a product.
The point is:
Don't overlook what you've already earned through experience.
Over the last few weeks we've gone from:
What else do you know?
to:
Is what you know valuable?
And now:
What could you actually do with it?
Your next opportunity might not come from learning something new.
It might already be in your head.
What Do YOU Know?
Here's what I'd like you to do.
Don't give me your business plan.
Don't worry about how you're going to monetize it.
Just answer one question:
What's ONE thing you know how to do really well?
Audio or otherwise.
Put it in the comments. I'd really like to see what everybody comes up with.
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