Your Expertise, Packaged

Encore Income Insider: weekly, practical help for corporate managers and directors turning proven expertise into real income, without leaving their jobs.

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Codie Sanchez, Colin & Samir, Joanna Stern, and Oliver Darcy are here too. They all built newsletters (and podcasts and communities and websites) on beehiiv.

Some came with massive followings. Others built theirs along the way. That’s the thing about beehiiv: with so many ways to earn and grow, the platform is ready for whatever you’re building next.

Get started for free.

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Most people's first picture of earning from their expertise is hourly work. Somebody has a problem, you show up, you bill for your time.

Some of the clients I've worked with went another way... they packaged what they know. A set of spreadsheet templates. A cloud storage cleanup service. That's what this week's issue is about: turning your expertise into something with a defined scope that a buyer can understand.

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Hourly work is the obvious place to start. You know the job, someone needs it done, and you trade your time for their money. It works (plenty of this newsletter has been about it).

There's another option, though, and people who've spent their careers being paid for their time tend to skip right past it. You can package what you know.

David K. is a Senior Operations Specialist. In his words: "Instead of custom consulting, I built standardized invoicing, project tracking, and client onboarding spreadsheet templates for local service contractors. It created a wonderful recurring digital product revenue stream."

Sarah R. is an IT Operations Manager. "Most people's digital lives are absolute chaos," she said. "I took my enterprise data management skills and packaged them for solo consultants and photographers who were drowning in messy cloud storage."

Natalie P. is a Customer Success Director. She helped a veteran business coach turn chaotic workshop notes into a structured, cohort-based online training program. Her verdict: "It was an absolute blast."

Those are three different points on the same line.

David built a product. Templates like his can be sold to more than one buyer, which can cut down on repeated setup work.

Sarah built a service around one specific problem... messy cloud storage for photographers and solo consultants. She's still the one doing the work, but the offer is easy to describe.

Natalie helped someone else package their expertise. Her skill was putting structure around what another person knew.

What I like about all three is how close each offer sits to the person's day job. An operations specialist built operations tools. An IT operations manager offered data cleanup. A customer success director helped someone else teach. Sarah said it outright: she took her enterprise data management skills and packaged them.

That's the real shift. You stop offering "whatever you need" and start offering one defined thing. A buyer can see what they get, and you can set a standard scope and a starting price.

One caution, and it's a big one. Don't copy or sell anything you made for your employer. Templates, processes and files built on company time or with company materials very likely belong to the company. And building a fresh version on your own time doesn't automatically make it yours to sell either... employment agreements often cover work and ideas related to your job. Check your agreement and any ownership or confidentiality terms before you build anything. I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. If anything's unclear, ask someone qualified.

So here's the question worth sitting with this week... which file, tool or fix do people keep asking you to send them?

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One hour, and nothing gets built yet.

First, list the things people keep asking you for. Skip the job title and write down the actual requests. "Can you send me that tracker?" "How do you set up your folders?" "Can you look over my plan before Friday?" Get down everything you can remember from the last year, at work and outside it.

Second, sort the list into two piles. Things that could become a product (a template, a checklist, a tool someone uses without you) and things that would make a packaged service (one defined fix you'd deliver yourself).

Third, circle one item and write one sentence describing it for a buyer outside your company: who it's for, what problem it fixes, and what they walk away with. Keep your employer's files, names and numbers out of it entirely, and check what your employment terms say before you build anything.

That's the hour. There you go. You'll have one possible package worth a closer look.

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Each person's own estimate, rounded, shared with permission. "Built" means the monthly revenue from outside work they reported once it was established, in most cases a monthly average, and it covers all of their outside work, not only what's described above. Not financial advice. Example only. Your results will vary.

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A short, very visual book for anyone who does good work quietly and hopes the right people notice. It makes the case for letting people see how you work along the way, and it's full of small, practical ways to do that without feeling like you're bragging. If you're thinking about packaging something, it's a good nudge on the part that comes next... helping buyers find out it exists.

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Writing this issue, I noticed something a little funny.

Look at the How I Can Help section just below. The two free tools, the Playbook, the AI Survival Guides... every one of them is packaged expertise. They work the same way whether I'm at my desk or not.

I've been writing about packaging for a week, and it turns out I've been doing it for a while.

P.S. If you've ever sold a template, checklist or tool you built yourself, hit reply and tell me what it was. I'd really like to hear it.

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Most of the people this is written for don't know it exists. They aren't searching for it, because they don't have a word yet for the thing they're looking for.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this issue, forward it to them. That's the whole mechanism.

There's a referral program attached if you want it. One referral gets you a sixteen-page workbook on building a tangible asset you're already qualified to create. Three gets the Projects Playbook plus your pick of an AI Survival Guide. Five gets The Read, Part One of my Personal Review, which I write and return myself.

A few things I've built, if any of them are useful this week.

No pressure on any of it. Take what's useful, skip the rest.

Scott Fulbright

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Not financial advice. I am a career coach specializing in corporate skill monetization, not a licensed financial planner, CPA, investment adviser or attorney. Nothing here is financial, tax, legal or investment advice, and nothing in it guarantees any outcome. Results vary with experience, market and effort.

This issue also discusses using work materials and doing outside work. It is for educational purposes only and is not legal advice. Employment agreements, company policies and applicable law vary. Consult a qualified employment attorney about your specific situation.

Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links, including Amazon Associates, which means I may earn a commission if you purchase through them at no additional cost to you.