# How I Built a Six-Figure Business With 6+ Income Streams

Channel: Niche Pursuits Podcast
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBluHCLt62A
Duration: 47 min
Language: English
Words: 9357
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/oBluHCLt62A

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[0:00] you kind of have this one company but really so many different income streams and it's not five business or six businesses. It's really one career that has multiple pillars. So the annualized recurring revenue is around $25,000 US. What are the big earners out of the six or seven streams we went through? The number one income stream and by a long way is actually [music] public

[0:20] speaking 15 even $20,000 a month. Why did you pick Substack? Because there's a lot of different options. Unlike any other newsletters that I had heard of, it has the social media element embedded. What are the other ways that you are interacting with people and giving them opportunities to buy from you? When people come to you again and again for a question for the same type of question, there's a business opportunity right there. That's how I launched the

[0:43] one-to-one coaching. How substantial are the books for you from an income standpoint? And I actually got the book deal before writing the book, which was really exciting. I had never had that experience before. So I got in advance and then we worked together during one year before publishing last year. Have you done anything to to get more people from the free uh tier over to the

[1:03] paid tier? My key strategy is All right, welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast. My name is Jared Bombman. Today we are joined by Veronica Lurca Smith with Lemon Tree Mindset. Veronica, welcome on board. Hi Jared. It's morning time here in Hong Kong. Super excited to join you here. Yeah, we had to get the scheduling out. You know, I had to get the calendars out and try to figure out exactly how we're going to pull this off. But evening where I am, morning where you are, it's not uncommon. We're used to talking to people all over the world and we're glad to have you here. Um, hey, before we get

[1:36] into it and all the different ways that you are um, uh, kind of making money online. Before we get into it, can you give us some backstory on yourself? Tell us about maybe some history, some of the things that led up to what we're going to be talking about today. Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm based in Hong Kong. I've been here for my entire career, although I'm originally from Spain. And uh before doing what I do today, which is what we're going to be talking about, I spent over 15 years in the corporate world working for big companies like Apple, Estee Lauder, and then at one point during the pandemic, I

[2:05] had my reinvention story. That's when I started writing. That's when I started speaking in public is now a bit over three years into it. And honestly, I wear many different hats. Sometimes I introduce myself as an author, sometimes as a public speaker, sometimes as a creator because what I love about what I do is that it's not just one thing and it keeps evolving. So it started with writing, but now I have multiple pillars in my business and that's what we're

[2:29] really going to go deeper into today. Yeah. You know, it's funny. we were talking about before we hit record and as I was preparing for it, you kind of have this one company, but really so many different income streams and so many different ways that you leverage those different income streams. Maybe start by giving us a high level. What are you involved in today? What are you doing? What are the different ways that you're earning? And like you said, we're going to get into kind of how it all works because it sounds overwhelming to me, at least when I first kind of read about it, but we're going to get into

[2:56] talking about how you pull it off. Sure. So first let's zoom out and uh start with uh what am I trying to do and I like to call it a portfolio career in the sense that it's not five business or six businesses it's really one career that has multiple pillars and right now it's six of them but it started with one and I think that's an important message we all start with one whatever is a low hanging fruit with for you whatever feels more comfortable and then it keeps evolving if we had this interview in a year it might probably be seven or eight because that's the thing that you can

[3:29] keep adding skills and passions and so on. So I'm going to give a high level and then we can go deeper into any of those. So the very first one is my paid community. So I have a publication on Substack which is called the lemon tree mindset. I launched it in February 2023. And I wanted to mention this as the first because it really is the cornerstone of everything. And uh what I mean by this is that the people who are in my community, my subscribers, whether they're free or paid, we'll talk about it. They are the ones who then become my students, who buy my books, who buy my

[4:05] courses. And so community really is the center of everything because that's where you build trust. It's not with followers, is not uh doing something else. It's really getting people to share their email address with you. And that way I control the the distribution and I'm really able to develop more of a relationship with my members. That's why I don't talk about audience. I like talking about community. So that's the

[4:29] lemon tree mindset. It's on Substack. Today I have a total of 14,000 subscribers, but I have it in two languages. I have English, which is the main one, which is 11,000 subscribers, and the Spanish one has a bit over 3,000. And so that's the number one. And I don't know if you want me to give a high level of the other ones. If you want to go deeper into the Substack, it's it's

[4:50] really up to you. It's a good question. Boy, we could go either way. Let's talk about Substack. Um uh 2023 you started it. Why did you pick Substack? Because there's a lot of different places to go. We have people on in the past who've picked up, you know, Kit, formerly ConvertKit, who've picked um you know, uh all these other different options. Why did you pick Substack? And you talked about free versus paid um and there's some differences there. talk tell us about that as well. I think a lot of people would have questions about how you chose

[5:17] how to set it up. Sure. So, to be super transparent, when I first launched Substack, I didn't know that you could monetize it. So, I didn't even know that that was an option. I'm very much let's get things done rather than spending a lot of time analyzing a lot of platforms. So, I actually didn't analyze a lot of platforms. I had people who recommended Substack. They said, "Hey, it's a great community for writers." And at the time it was very specific for writers and that's what I was focusing on even though later on it evolved and there is one element of substite that I feel I find is quite

[5:50] unique unlike any other newsletters that I had heard of it has the social media element embedded and so I like to call it a social newsletter in the sense that if you take any of the others that you mentioned and they're great but convert and behive and all of that they don't really have a community an organic community so you really have to find

[6:09] your subscribers and then bring them in. And what I love about Substack for those who are not familiar is that you already have a community that is there and people communicate through what we call notes which is post in all the social media like LinkedIn. And so I might write a note today. Hey, I had a great podcast with Jared this morning. If you're interested in knowing about portfolio careers, someone who's never seen me might see that note. They'll be like, "Oh, that looks interesting." And then internally, organically, that person would subscribe. And that's why it has so much power because it's really quite hard to bring people from the

[6:42] outside but if the users are already there it's much easier to convert them when it comes to choosing to start to monetize it right and I think you mentioned if you could share with us like where are you at if you're comfortable with how much you're making from the paid community there on Substack but how did you choose to start monetizing with Substack and what is that you know kind of how's that uh how is that set up at this point in time three three plus years in sure so today the annualized revenue because it's recurrent so the annualized recurring revenue is around 25,000 US and that keeps fluctuating new people

[7:20] come in new people uh people go out but that's on average what I'm making today and uh so back to the beginning I started monetizing so first there's a very interesting function that people who are not familiar with substack they're not aware of which is called pledge and so before you turn on the paid subscriptions. What's really interesting is that you can have this pledge turned on. And basically what it means is that you give people the option to tell you, hey Veronica, if in the future you turn on paid subscription, I commit to become a paid subscriber and they even put the credit card. And so

[7:54] that's a great way that is built to give writers, especially new writers, confidence because when we started, at least it was my experience, I had this massive imposter syndrome that no one was going to pay for my writing. But when you start to see these little signs of people saying, "Hey, I would give you a vote of trust. I would become a paid subscriber." So in my case, that's what gave me the confidence to say, "Oh, I have a few people people here who have

[8:18] pledged to pay." And so I turned it on. And I think that's important because the first change was in my mindset was to convince myself that what I was creating and what I was sending to my subscribers had value. So that's the number one. And then once I launched it, the question was well, what am I going to monetize exactly? How am I going to pay to make the difference? What is going to be free? What is going to be paid? So I did a lot of trial and error. I've tried different things. Also, it's been evolving uh throughout the time. But now my key strategy is um information for

[8:53] free and implementation has a fee. Meaning I'm happy to share all the information what I'm doing. I'm very open, very transparent about it. I think information has become very uh is a commodity in the sense that with AI most of the things that I can share you can find somewhere else but is the how to and is the implementation and is a tutorial or framework that people are more likely to pay for. So that's at a high level how I like to look at my monetization strategies. What I call a premium strategy. You give a lot of content for free but then you also have to give that extra so that people want

[9:29] to upgrade. So that idea of implementation that's one but also as I mentioned at the beginning community is very very important for me personally. So I don't just want to bring a lot of people that are going to pay money for my content. I actually want them to be part of the community. And so in the past couple of years, I've been really putting a lot of effort and uh just thought and care into how I go from an audience to a community. And what I do is, for example, for my paid members, I have a group chat. And every week I open two chats. One is free for everyone, the

[10:04] other one is paid. And in the paid one, I make sure that I open that for questions, but also for personalized feedback. So that if someone wanted to tell me, "Hey, Veronica, I don't know how to monetize. How would you go about it? I actually give spec specific feedback to Jared on that specific question and I do find that people see the value in that because it's not just generic advice. It's like this is my

[10:27] situation. What would you recommend? That has tremendous value. The peer-to-peer sharing also has tremendous value. Many people in my community started to do podcast together or invite someone to write a guest post because they met in that community. So that's again the peer-to-peer element of growing a community. And then the other thing that is more from this year in

[10:47] 2026 is a monthly business roundts. I started doing them earlier in the year because I had a challenge which is I used to do webinars before and it was more kind of a master class me talking for example about how to become a public speaker or whatever topic and people would uh come and until last year I found that that was a model that worked pretty well. But then towards the end of last year, beginning of this year, I saw that people were not coming as much and I was just trying to figure out what's going on. Like my content is always the same if not better because you have more

[11:20] experience. And I wasn't really sure. And then I realized by asking people that what was missing was more the interaction and the peer-to-peer sharing. And I I heard again and again the expression of sounding board. I would love to have a sounding board. And that's how I evolved from a more one-way master class or webinar to these roundts that are not just let's talk about business is very targeted is very specific. Last month we talked about portfolio careers because that's the topic that I was talking about. Then this month we're really focusing on community and relationships because many of my members told me well I don't just

[11:56] want to grow numbers I actually want to grow a community similar to the elementary mindset. And so that's going to be the topic for this month. what are the tools that you have inside Substack but also outside of Substack. How can you engage your members in a deeper way? What's working? What's not working? And so that has really been my strategy to be able to monetize is give people that place where they really feel, hey, I'm not just here to get information that I could get from somewhere else. It's really something that's very specific, but also where I get this sense of

[12:26] community. So clearly you've done a really good job of separating both in terms of structurally how you go about presenting content to people who are on the free portion of what you do versus the paid portion, but also just in the rollout of it. And I'm curious, I guess my next question would be um what what is the percentage of people that end up on your free uh subsack versus people that end up in your paid substack, your community? Um and how have you noticed that fluctuate over the years? Have you done anything to try to optimize to get more people from the free uh tier over

[13:01] to the paid tier? Um if you have, what what has worked? What hasn't worked as well? Just curious what the breakdown is on free versus paid. Sure. So, this is going to be very unsexy because when I joined Subsac, I heard these numbers from Substack that looked very promising. Between 5 to 10% of your free subscribers are likely to become paid subscribers. So, those numbers sounded amazing. And then my reality was quite different. not super different, but instead of that even 5% that was on the low side of things, I'm closer to 3%. Which is quite tiny. So if you flip the if you flip it around, it

[13:36] means that 97% of people who read my work, they don't pay. And I want to talk about something that I think is more interesting than actually the whole ratio. And then I'll go into that, which is the following. When I started and I see these reflected in people in my community, I was really focusing on I need to get more paid subscribers. I need to get more paid subscribers. And so it almost becomes an obsession on how you get people to become paid. But then at one point I realized, look, I'm just trying to focus on these 3% to take them to 5%. But I I have already over 10,000

[14:11] people who are here. And maybe I don't need to target all of them to become paid subscribers because some people they will never become paid subscribers. Maybe it's not the way that they like to follow people. Maybe is an um a financial situation or whatever it is. And so I started to really think much broader and say, "Hey, I already have this community. It's all about giving different options for people to be able to engage with me and my content on their terms and not necessarily on my terms. Not everyone wants to be part of a community. Not everyone wants to pay a monthly fee. And so that's when I had

[14:47] the light bulb moment of I should be offering other things. And that's when I started to go for courses, for example, and boot camps outside and and one-to-one coaching. So that's how I went from focus on paid subscribers to go broader and think about this portfolio career and what it could look like in in practice. To answer your question, has it changed? Honestly, throughout the years, it's been pretty consistent around the 3%. I always try things to see if I'm able to have more conversion. I'm not someone who does a lot of promotions because this is not really my style. I see many people doing like a 90% off. I do regular offers,

[15:25] maybe once a quarter, if there's something special that I'm launching. I like to give something something special, but rather than leading with price, I always try to lead with value and and with new things. like what can I do that's different as I explained with the example of moving from webinars to more roundts. I'm glad you brought it up because this is a perfect segue for us to get into all the other things you're doing to monetize and to to work with your audience. Really quickly though, I do want to take a minute to to talk about our sponsor today. And I mean, we talk every week about businesses and that's

[15:59] why Quiet Light is a really frankly a perfect sponsor for our podcast. And we're talking with Veronica here today about her business. If you are looking to figure out what your business might be worth, uh maybe you want to get a valuation so you kind of know what that target is and where you're at compared to the target. Maybe you're just looking to exit. Uh any of those reasons, uh you you definitely want to reach out to QuietLight. And um you can do that and get a free confidential valuation at

[16:24] quietite.com. A couple things that make them stand out is that you get one- on-one advice and you work with someone one-on-one. So, you work with someone not only one-on-one, but someone who has been in the trenches, who has bought, sold, and built businesses, uh, online businesses similar to the ones we talk about here. Um, and so there's a lot of other features. I'll talk about a few more of them at the end of the podcast. But if you want to go get your free and confidential valuation, you can just go to quietite.com. Again, that's

[16:49] quiet.com. Okay. So, perfect segue. Veronica, you were talking about how, hey, I think that's interesting because I've heard other people talk about it. Hey, it's not really about getting people onto the paid tier and Substack. It is, but if that's kind of your end- all beall monetization goal, you're probably falling a lot short. So, what are the other ways that you are interacting with people and giving them opportunities to buy from you? You mentioned workshops, you mentioned courses, I know you speak publicly like let's let's get into all

[17:17] the things if we if we can now. Sure. And maybe I'll take you through the journey because I think it's going to be easier for someone who is maybe starting see how all this can evolve. So you have this situation. In my case, I had all these subscribers, 3% convert, the others didn't. But what I did realize is that many people were coming to me with questions and it was often themes, recurring themes that came and it had to do with how to grow my digital business, where do I get started, how can I kick off my Substack? And so I started to realize that all these

[17:52] questions had the potential to become a business. And this is a a really important message. When people come to you again and again for a question with the same type of question, there's a business opportunity right there. And it's up to you to see how you want to repackage it. That's how my onetoone was born because people were actually coming to me. Can you help me with this? And instead of just can I pick on your brains for free for 30 minutes is like let's make this strategic, let's make it

[18:17] much more thoughtful and uh customized. And so that's how I launched the one-to-one coaching. And that was great. And I wanted to mention it first because when you're starting, it really is a lowhanging fruit. It doesn't require a lot of infrastructure. All I had really was uh the uh payment link on Stripe and uh that's it because the potential clients were already there. They were already in my community. So if you're thinking, oh, what could be something that I could get started with? It's not very scalable, but it's very easy to

[18:47] launch the onetoone. So, I mean, does a lot of this stuff come from what you write about on your Substack? Is that where a lot of what you then end up producing? Or is it, you know, putting together a course, for example, that's a lot of work, uh, but maybe not as much for you because you're writing so much anyways? Like, talk about the workload of of all these different things that you're producing

[19:09] for for um for your audience. Sure. So, for the coaching, to be honest, all I need to do is put a call to action. Let's say that today I'm talking about how I just launched my new digital course. That is true is actually a portfolio career. So I just launched that on on Gumroad and I explained that to my members. So if I just add a little call to action if you would like to grow your portfolio career and have customized advice, you can book your session. I don't need any extra effort or a lot of marketing or ads because my community is already in front of me. So

[19:43] that's that. in regards to how much work it takes when you start going into other pieces. So specifically digital courses which is my focus on digital products. In my case because I write already so much what I do is instead of writing randomly today about books and next week I write about public speaking I have

[20:02] this strategy of serializing content. And so I might pick one specific topic. So right now it is portfolio careers. I publish eight different posts. So I had all this raw material that is already there. Through that those posts I had people convert. So that in itself generated a bit over 1,200 US in incremental revenue from paid subscriptions plus getting information to my community. But then what I did is I took all of those eight posts, I [snorts] repackaged them, I added videos, I added exercises so that it feels more elevated than just the same thing in a different box. And I converted that I I turned it into a

[20:45] digital course that I published on sub on Gumroad sorry. And so that strategy for me works really well. It does not take a lot of time because the thinking has been done. The writing is already done and it's really more the marketing exercise of putting everything together. For me personally, it's been really a game changer to realize that the work that you do on your newsletter, it can become evergreen. So much so that I actually only started courses last year in May or June. That was my first course. Since then, I've published seven and they're all written by me. I don't use AI because they they are already

[21:20] written on my newsletter. So, it's totally Veronica is my voice. I add videos as well to make it much more human and make sure that people don't even question is this? No, no, this is me talking with my voice [snorts] and uh and with my ideas. And I find that that's a really good way to turn your newsletter not only into evergreen content but also passive income because now my course is already there. So every time that I want to promote it, I put a little note. Hey, if you like to know more about portfolio careers, this is how I can help you. One, you can become

[21:52] a paid subscriber. Two, you can have a one-to-one coaching. Three, you can take my course. And it's the idea that is the same product, but you're giving people different options. So, this is probably a good time to ask. I have it on my list. I was wondering when the right time to ask would be, how do you like a big challenge people have uh especially when it comes to content creation on a consistent ongoing basis like what you're doing? And you did tease it a bit in terms of, hey, when people email you with a question or a problem, that's a great indication and

[22:23] that's something you should lean into. Well, spend a minute talking about how you come up with content ideas and how you come up with ideas that you can consistently write about that are intriguing for people. Um, uh, whether it's a newsletter, whether it's in your community, uh, whether it's, you know, these topics you're engaging with, whatever it looks like, how are you

[22:41] coming up with all of the ideas? So, coming up with ideas personally is not very hard in the sense that we all have lots of ideas. In my case, my ideation happens while I'm running. I'm a triathlete so I go exercising every day. So I get all the ideas there. But I think the important thing is that it's not just about your ideas and what you're passionate about and what you

[23:02] want to write about is also validating. And I think doing this exercise of finding the sweet spot between the things that you want to write about and the things that your community is interested in. That's really where you have to spend a little bit of time trying to see how do I find that sweet spot. In my case, because I've come to a point where I have a community and as I was saying, I have the group chat, I have my um roundts with my members, they actually feed me the things that they're interested in. For example, this month's topic for the business roundt, I wasn't

[23:37] too sure what I wanted to talk about. that I had a few ideas but then when I asked my members a few of them seem to be interested in the aspect of relationship building there's so many people they're shouting how to grow your community how to grow your substack how to get more subscribers and but what they want is actually how do I go deeper what happens once the person is already inside and to me that was a really good example of hearing actively listening to what my members want to to know about so very often I just take little cues sometimes it can from group settings

[24:10] like the ones I mentioned sometimes in the comments I hear a lot of people coming back with the same topics. One thing for example that I see coming back to me again and again is kind of this question is how do you plan your content? How can you create a content strategy? What do you do to make sure that you don't burn out or you're always struggling to find new ideas? So I'm trying to think okay maybe that could be a series on content creation. Maybe this could be a tutorial. I'm not exactly what it will be, but I know that that

[24:38] that seed is there. So, you talked about courses and you said, I think seven courses since you started doing this just like a year, year and a half ago. Um, which ones have done well versus not? And like, have you figured out why some do better than others? Like, um, uh, how's that all split up for you? Seven courses, that's a good amount. We probably could get

[24:59] some good data from you at this point. You've done more than just one, two, you know, three courses. Yes. So the breakdown is is actually five courses but two of them I also translated in Spanish because I saw they were doing quite well in uh English. So the one that did the best maybe we start there is uh how to grow on Substack is called the Substack bestseller and uh that one the reason why it went it did very well I think is quite obvious. There's an

[25:28] interest in Substack. I am on Substack. I became a bestseller which means that I have over 100 paid subscribers which gives you a little orange tick and that gives you a lot of credibility and I think the timing was also very good. I launched it last year mid of the year there wasn't a lot of competition and so that course did uh did did quite well so much so that a month later I was like well I have all the content here I should just do it in Spanish and so that's how my second course was launched. The one that uh didn't do as well is for example the one on public

[26:00] speaking. One of my courses is uh on uh public speaking and is not the skill to become a public speaker is actually how to monetize your expertise to become a public speaker. But in a way I was kind of predicting that because public speaking is something that is very niche and it's really not for everyone. And so I knew that my target audience was going to be smaller. But this was a strategic move for me because that public speaking course, it didn't just come out of the blue. I'm a public speaker. I now have cohorts or boot camps for public speaking for people who want to monetize

[26:41] their expertise through workshops, webinars, and so on. And so in my mind, it made a lot of sense that I created an ecosystem around public speaking. And so that's where the course plays a key role as a course standalone hasn't sold too much because that's not the main thing that I talk about usually but in ecosystem and in my cohort I would say that around 50 to 60% of my students they get the package that includes the course and we go back to this idea of an ecosystem and not just having random pieces living here and there but making sure that when you have a topic you're

[27:17] able to give people different options and in that regard Having that course has been great for me because every time I run this workshop which at the moment is uh once a month I just finished last week. I know that uh quite a few of these students are going to be interested in the course because I give

[27:34] a a deal that is a no-brainer. Basically, if you upgrade just a few dollars, you're going to get the course for free. That that's a really interesting point, a really good one to make because the courses have value for you beyond just what someone might pay for them all a cart, but they actually give you a lot of bundling opportunities to add value to other parts of your business or other things that people might purchase. Um, so really good pricing and packaging tip there. Uh, you mentioned public speaking, you mentioned workshops. We haven't talked about those yet. Um, how often are you doing public speaking, doing workshops? How much income do you

[28:08] think that adds to your overall earnings for for your business? Sure. So, let's talk about workshops first because that's still within my BTOC ecosystem is still very connected to Substack and then we can talk about the public speaking which is B2B and that's quite a separate part of my business. So the workshops I call them boot camps and uh the way that I structure them they are specifically on public speaking as I was saying people who already have experience and they want to start selling that experience in the corporate world through keynote webinars workshops whatn not and so there are small groups so I call it

[28:44] boutique coaching up to 10 people and it's very boot camp it's very intense is only three sessions and I do them back to back three days on a row 90 minutes a little bit more And uh I have my methodology which is day one is get started. How you get started as a speaker, your infrastructure, your signature topic. So it's really the

[29:05] foundation. Day two is getting traction. How you start to build your brand as a speaker. How you start to attract people. How you create content that positions you as a speaker. And day three is how to get paid. And there we go very deep into the monetization aspect from how to build an offer, the tiers that you create, pricing, speaker agreement, cancellation fees, speaker bureaus. So we really go into how you can now get paid. And for me, these uh workshops have been great because first

[29:36] it gives me a lot of flexibility. Basically, I host them whenever I want. So I did it right uh at the beginning of September because it was back to school. So my kids went back to school. I finally had a little bit of of free time. I didn't have a lot of other business. So I was like perfect business opportunity. I will run the next one in

[29:53] October. So the flexibility is amazing. And another thing that uh is really interesting and I only found out through practice is that initially I thought that I needed to blast this to everyone to try to promote it as much as possible. But then what actually ended up happening is that the people who joined they were not strangers. They were paid subscribers. They were my coaching clients. They were people who already trust me and are already in my community. So there wasn't even a cannibalization. There was more value ad on top of what I was already doing. So my strategy changed. I don't blast my boot camps to anyone. You wouldn't

[30:31] actually find much about it if uh you check online. But I have a more hightouch onetoone strategy. meaning I already know people in my community because I have a community who is interested in public speaking, who is already doing something but hasn't monetized. And I usually go onetoone. I target maybe 15 people that I know and I know that they're interested in that topic. And I tell them, hey, my boot camp is happening next month. Are you interested in joining? I think this is why it would be relevant for you. And instead of doing this blind pitch, I actually pick a small but targeted number of people and the conversion is

[31:08] great and I don't have to tire my entire list of subscribers where maybe 99% are not interested in public speaking. I want to ask you about your books. You have multiple books. One of them is you have as as a deal with Penguin as a as a publisher. Um I know I'm trying to get through all the stuff you're doing. It's it's hard to even get through in the time we have and that's not that's saying something because we got plenty of time but okay so a book we can kind of start to see how you are able to do all this and and I I will come back kind of to to bring

[31:45] us to a close towards the end to talk about the ways you're bringing all this together. So you're not individually starting all these individual things. You're kind of really doing things that all build on top of each other. But before we do that I do want to hear about the book. I want to hear about the books. Um how those came about. how you landed a deal with Penguin. And again, the the kind of the question is like how substantial are the books for you from an income standpoint or is it a lot like how you describe some of the workshops where they really add value or they do

[32:11] other things for your business more so than the revenue they might generate? Sure. So maybe we start from the beginning which is this group. This is the beginning. So I self-published the lemon tree mindset early 2023. I didn't have a lot of sales at all and I realized that the problem was that I didn't have a community and hence I didn't have readers. So that's why I launched my substack which is has the exact same name the lemon tree mind. So that was the order first the book no readers and then I needed to find the readers. So I published the um the substack the the newsletter. From there

[32:45] I loved um publishing books. I thought it was a great way of building my brand and uh being more strategic than just sending posts here and there. So I I self-published a second book and then I published my first book with an indie publisher which is called the flight home. And after those three books I had this uh vision that I really wanted to go with a big publisher. Part of it was simply I want to have a different experience but I also believe that it was going to give a lot of authority as a writer. And so I started looking around and uh studying and uh

[33:21] researching about the process to become a published author especially but by one of the big fives because it's it's extremely hard only a small portion of authors are able to get a deal. And so I don't know how much in detail we want to go into, but if there is one tip that really helped me is that instead of just going broad and sending 50 or 60 submissions to a lot of publishers, I've started to really understand the industry and realize that inside those big publishers, you actually have smaller companies. It's like if it's a big holding group and inside you have what they call imprints. And one big

[34:00] publisher like Penguin Random House, the biggest in the world, they have over 300 imprints. Once you understand how that works, then you realize, oh, there are 300. I really have to do my homework here and go narrow and deeper and see which is the imprint out of these 300 that is going to be interested in a topic like mine, the anti-procrastinator. So, I went very deep. I realized or I discovered that

[34:25] there was a penguin in Southeast Asia. I'm based in Hong Kong. And so all of a sudden my efforts that were going a bit everywhere started to be much more targeted and I was able to then find a person who was the um director for this region. We had a call. I pitched the idea and I actually got the book deal before writing the book which was really exciting. I had never had that experience before. So I got an advance and then uh we worked together during one year before publishing uh the la

[34:54] last year in 2025. What what's been the significance of the book? You know I mean I've I've interviewed people here that talk about hey the book is good for the brand. It's good for uh notoriety. It's good for credibility. It gets you in front of other places that you wouldn't otherwise get it to. I've also interviewed people that have a whole publishing uh a book publishing career and that's where they they generate their income. Um what has been the experience like for you now that you've you're on the back side of a of a book deal with a major publisher, you've self-published some, you've got a

[35:26] couple books out there in circulation. Sure. So my experience has been that you have to look at books with two lens. The first one is in terms of the actual monetization. So basically how much money you're making from those books. And the second one is what else are those books doing for your business. So in the first part to be honest my experience is that the book sales and royalties have been quite disappointing in the sense that uh first to start a big publisher usually gives you around 8% royalties. So only 8% of the sales which is tiny tiny tiny it's not much at all. And then the

[36:04] second thing is that there's a bit of a misunderstanding or this perception that oh if I go with a big publisher they're going to do all the marketing for me and not at all. I had to do so much. They do help with the initial push but they are a a book business so for them it's like the next book and the next book and the next book and so you really have to put a lot of effort into keep doing all the marketing and and so on. So, in terms of book sales, honestly, it's the the smallest of all the pillars that I've talked about today, but I've published

[36:36] four books and there's a reason why it's four and I didn't stop after the first one. And I very early on realized that books, they do something for your brand and for your bill, for your business that's quite intangible, but it's very, very important and substantial. And that is what it does for your brand. In my case, as a speaker, as a coach, when I'm being introduced to clients, very often the clients themselves, my corporate clients, they like to introduce me as Veronica. She's a speaker. She's also an author published by Penguin. So, it

[37:07] gives you a lot of credibility. Personally, one thing that I love about books, especially with the ones that have been published by publishers, is that they open incredible opportunities. Like for example, last year I traveled to India to a book festival and they invited me to go and participate in panels and introduce my book in India. To me that was incredible. But also for my brand now I'm an international author who goes to literary festivals. Same thing last year I went to Singapore as well. I spoke here in um Hong Kong at the international literary festival. So all of that it really boosts your visibility. And also one of the things

[37:45] that I do back to my whole ecosystem is that the book for me it doesn't end here. So this book specifically then became a course on Gumroad. I have a course that's called also the antirocrastinator and I also turned it into a workshop for companies because this topic of anti-procrastination, productivity, time management is something that companies are interested in. And so from one book now you start

[38:09] to build a little ecosystem around it. And so one piece is really helping the other become stronger. Good grief. You really you really do tile this stuff together very nicely. Um speaking of tying it together, let let's take let's try to take a step back and get that overview. Um I count six maybe seven income streams that we've talked about so far on the podcast. I think we got through most of them. um from a high level um you don't need to share exact numbers and like that but just give us a mindset about how much you are able to generate from this and maybe what are

[38:44] the big what what are the big earners out of the six or seven streams we went through um then I have a couple questions about how you pull it off but we'll start there sure so at a high level having like these multiple streams inside my portfolio it has helped me grow a business that is six figures But I like to be specific on how that counts because I think it's very

[39:05] easy to just throw a number in there. And one thing that's very important is that each month looks very different. For example, if it's like a holiday month, I don't do any public speaking because I'm away anyways. If it's a P season for International Women's Day, for example, I do a lot of talks on leadership and communication. And so that's a peak season for my public speaking. So that's to give you an a sense that is always is always fluctuating. The number one income stream and by a by a long way is actually public speaking. Public speaking in the corporate industry in the corporate world. I come from

[39:40] corporate. So for me is a world that I know. I spent uh more than 15 years leading large teams in Asia for big brands like Apple, Estee Lauder. And so what I do is I sell workshops and keynotes that go between $3,000 US dollars more or less if it's more like a workshop style up to $5,000 US if we're talking more of a keynote or more like a a bigger presentation. And so something like public speaking if it's a big month I might have four five sessions. So that in itself you're already talking about 15 even 20,000 US a month which is amazing. But I can't rely only on that

[40:19] because also I don't know when the clients are going to book me. And that's where having these other pillars come in handy. Right now as of 2026, the second pillar is the workshops that I was talking about, the boot camps. I do these boot camps on public speaking. They are small, but the value is higher because they're very boutique. They're very high touch. And so I'm able to make around 3,000 to$4,000 US uh per workshop. And the great thing about that is if I'm having a lower month, for

[40:46] example, June was not very busy for me. So I did two of those. And so that's the great thing. If you have one lever and you see that is a good time to go for it, then you can uh double down on that particular pillar. And then the other ones, they tend to be more recurrent the courses. So now, for example, I just

[41:06] launched my course on portfolio careers. So, I'm having a spike in my gumroad sales on courses, but on average, I can make around a thousand US dollars. It's not a lot with courses, but it's really a nice extra that keeps ticking along in the background. And when you launch, in my experience, I would say 80% of the sales tend to happen during that first

[41:27] month. So, that way you're going to see the spikes. And then my community is there, as I mentioned at the beginning, around $25,000 US a year. And uh that's really what keeps all the other pillars going. That's phenomenal. It it it sounds like a lot for I'll say the average person to manage. And what do I mean by that? I mean it sounds like from talking to you for 40 plus minutes now, you just seem like you have a really deep understanding of how all this ties

[41:58] together. for someone who is struggling to put pieces like this together in their business. Uh maybe they have a newsletter, they struggle to add courses or they have an idea for a book but they wrote it and it flopped and they don't know where to go with it or maybe just someone who's looking to gain wisdom from you and how you tie all this together and bring all the value that you do like what what what kind of you know what kind of uh inspiration or advice would you have for them? again talking to the person who we'll say is an expert in their space but is not able

[42:29] to tie everything together as well as you have and be as uh productive really I guess as you have been. So maybe we start with something very practical because you told me Veronica I want to go very granular. So let's say that that person is you Jared. Let's say that you have this podcast and you're telling me I don't know exactly how to monetize it. So we have this uh this avatar that is the fake Jared and so what I would do is first pick what is your expertise. So I can see that you're really good with podcast and there are so many people who want to be really

[42:59] good with podcast. So what you could do is uh have a series that you launch on Substack because we're talking about Substack that is uh launching your podcast as a rookie and instead of talking about 10 different things, you now have a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve and you try to take your viewers or readers from zero to I want to launch a successful podcast. You break it into let's say 10 pieces. I I like it to make it not too long and each of them is tackling one element of launching a podcast. One can be the vision, the other one might be the

[43:33] technology, how to find guests platform. So there's an evolution and there's a journey. And so now you go from oh my god I'm struggling. I don't know what to write about to have a super clear road map and a super clear north star of where you want to go. When you finish those eight post and if it's weekly, we're already talking about two months here that you've been really on your lane, you already have incredible content that you can use in different ways. To give you two examples or even three, first you could have a little call to action. If you want to launch a podcast and have personal personalized

[44:06] advice, let's book a onetoone. That's your number one. Number two is when you finish all this content, you repackage it and turn it into a course. I would say a video course because it it elevates it and as I was saying that's my strategy I think it adds value. So that's the second one and you can publish it on the site. And the third one if you see that it's starting to have traction you could even turn that into a small workshop for people who really want to have this more personalized attention on okay 90 minutes or two hours on how to launch your sub your your podcast. So you see

[44:41] how it sounds very complicated but when you actually go granular it makes a lot of sense that you have this clear vision and then you see okay how am I going to concentrate my energy into this same topic and from there create my mini portfolio career and then you take that bigger and you go further because you have seven or eight of these little mini concepts that you've worked into books and workshops and speaking events and all that sort of thing. It's great. It's great. Um, Veronica, where can people follow along with what you have going on, learn more about what you're doing, uh, and get in touch with you if they

[45:13] want to? Absolutely. So, feel free to connect with me with the Lamentary Mindset on Subsac. And I'm also very active on LinkedIn, more as a speaker in the corporate field, but those are really my two key channels. Well, it's been great having you and I also want to take one moment to just thank our sponsor today again, Quiet Light. Um, if you're looking to learn the value of your business, if you're looking to see what an exit might look like, maybe you're just trying to forecast and plan for the future, you can reach out to Quiet Light and get a free and confidential valuation on your

[45:45] business. Um, they are absolutely wonderful because of a couple of reasons. We've been through a few of them earlier. I'll highlight those, maybe highlight a couple of other ones. Um, I mentioned that they uh the operator, the people over there are operators. They have bought, they have built, they have sold businesses much like yours. And so you get a lot of expert advice and you get a lot of good experience. Another thing that we didn't talk about earlier is that you don't get tossed into a marketplace. It's a very curated sales experience. And that's something that is very unique compared to some other places that you might look

[46:14] to sell your business. So you can get your free and confidential valuation over at quietite.com. Veronica, thanks for being here. Much uh continued success. Good luck. I just I hope you can manage it all. It sounds like you've got it well under control though and you're doing great. So, thanks again for joining us and sharing about all the different things that you have going and how it all works

[46:32] together. Thank you, J. My pleasure. All right, talk soon.

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