I've been busy.
Busy climbing down the ladder of wealth creation. "What? Climbing down?"
Yup, not climbing up. I’m climbing down. I will share with you why.
My journey from $0 to $12k/month
Let’s go back to early 2021. That’s when I earned my first dollar on the internet. Honestly, it felt like cracking the secret code to a better life. I was just sitting at home with my laptop, and I was making more money each month.
I was mainly selling live and self-paced courses.
By April 2023, I hit $12,789 in revenue in a single month.
I was ecstatic.
I thought I had it figured out.
I once read Nathan Barry’s The Ladder of Wealth Creation so I felt very proud that I have gone straight from salary money (step 1) to product revenue (step 4) — a stage many entrepreneurs dream of reaching.
Selling these digital products especially lit a fire in me.
I love the art of putting together educational products that unlock something in someone. And my audience’s positive words kept me going. My small wins started stacking up. I thought, “I could do this forever!”
But then, I started seeing the cracks in my foundation ...
Facing unpredictable income
Product revenue, no matter how exciting, is often inconsistent. You need to have built the right funnels and have enough traffic coming in all the time. A single best month can’t offset the quiet ones.
Also, selling products is harder as it requires a very different, large set of skills (Nathan's article described this nicely). This means if I want to sell these skills as a service or even work for someone again, I’d have a hard time pitching.
So recently, I made a choice.
Instead of forcing myself to stay on the product revenue step, I decided to step down the ladder.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been helping someone else build a course.
It’s been refreshing. I’m not just creating for him — I’m learning too. I'm figuring out how to build courses for a different audience. I'm sorting out how to tap into someone's brain to extract his philosophy.
Oh and let’s say working with someone 1000x ahead of me has been fun. I start to see what gaps I have in my own work. I’m refining my skills and getting exposed to new ideas, all while earning service revenue. Sweet.
To go from product revenue to service revenue, you might see that this is a step back. I was thinking the same.
Except that, I'm 3 weeks in, and I feel that it’s actually a step forward.
Why is it a step forward?
Because I’ve realized the healthiest creator education businesses don’t rely 100% on product revenue. Instead, they blend products, services, and consulting.
- Products bring scalability
- Services offer stability
- Consulting creates opportunities for customer discovery and deeper connections
Who doesn't like product revenue because it is often "passive income", right? But does offering a service jeopardize my product revenue? Doesn't have to be if I have the right system set up.
I know, I’ve been showing you how to build a small school based on selling what you know, but that doesn’t only mean building more and more courses and templates.
If you have a service offer, you're unlocking stability and a deep skill that can help you go further.
In the ideal world, your service and product are aligned so they reinforce each other. Just like how a friend of mine is doing corporate fitness workshops to drive potential customers to his digital offerings.
Having this mix doesn’t just reduce your risk. I think it’ll make your journey more sustainable too.
Let's be happy and play the long game!
