The last few months in my business have been interesting to say the least. And by interesting, I mean good. I've been taking consistent small action in a number of areas in my business and the results are paying off. Every day. And I love it. Before we get into 'How to Be Your Own Case Study & Profit in The Process', let me share a little bit of how this all came up. I've been sharing with you guys a little bit about my affiliate journey on this site and on the Freedom Papers Podcast site (which by the way is getting a complete brand makeover, but more on that in another episode. Let me just say that the decision didn't come lightly but it's one we're really excited about). When I made the decision to start shifting away from service work (and by the way, if you're a current client please know that I'm not abandoning anyone. This is more about who I choose to work with and the type of work I choose to do) I had to step back and get clear on what I DID want to do (yes, this is uber obvious, I know). This is the beauty of making changes. It requires you to find a different perspective on things and fortunately, my personal life provided that perspective. The most obvious choice for me was to increase my affiliate income on The WordPress Chick. You've heard me talk about CPA marketing and affiliate marketing with niche sites and through things that aren't related to this brand, but I've calmed down about that. It's still something I'm going to pursue but not right now. Trust me though, there is a method to my madness. I have to admit that as I acknowledge all this it seems so obvious... the problem with obvious is that you have to be in the right frame of mind to see it. And I wasn't. The changes I was going through in my personal life were a little consuming (I'm sure you guys were as sick of my house move as I was). But hey... that's one of the reasons we run our own businesses, right? So we can live our lives too and not have our schedules dictated by what someone else dictates. Now that all of that is behind me and I'm settled in my new place, I feel a fresh excitement and clarity with everything. Yes everything. My business and my personal life. For the sake of not boring you, I'm going to stick with the business side of things today. Let's talk about Being Your Own Case Study When I got into my first big mastermind group the model was: Create a case study, record a video, drive traffic to an opt-in page so the lead can then watch the case study video, then get them to apply for a strategy session where you can offer a high ticket service. Simple enough, right? But what if you don't have any case studies? You go get them. What I did at the time was send an offer to my list stating that I was looking for case studies (I never said it would be free). I got about 8 responses immediately to my email and I set up the calls. Of the people I talked to I got 3 to sign up for a 3-month coaching program so I could get some results. At the time I also had two other coaching clients so I was gaining traction with what I was doing. From there I created my 'case studies', made my case study video and went into promotion mode. This was in late 2013 so Facebook ads were much cheaper, but it worked. From less than an $90 ad spend I made $500 in strategy session calls ( I charged for the appointment) and $10k in coaching clients (this was paid over a 3 month period). The next time I did case studies was for my Influence Podcasting program (done-for-you podcasting). We produced podcasts for 3 different people (show, show notes, website... all of it) at NO charge so we could get this process down. Only one of those people is still doing their podcast but it's worked extremely well for him (he got a $5k coaching client within the first two months directly from the podcast). We built our systems and ironed out the bugs in doing that. The trick with podcasting is that it's a marathon...