how to print money

There’s a moment every online entrepreneur never forgets:

The first time you sell knowledge instead of time and money lands while you’re off living your life (well, sort of).

Mine was over 12 years ago in Bali. I was teaching English online, repeating the same dull grammar points until my soul seeped out through the webcam (yes, back then it was good old Skype). Then I spotted Kajabi’s new subscription feature. Something clicked.

I wrote a scrappy sales page in an hour, emailed it to 200 people, ten signed up at £20 a month.

Pocket change? Absolutely.

But it flipped a switch I’ve never turned off since: 

A simple digital product, launched before it feels ‘ready’, can quietly become your personal money printer.

Here’s how to build yours, piece by piece.

Why Most People Never Get There

Almost everyone wants to sell a course, a PDF, a toolkit.

Almost no one does it. Or they overthink it, polish it for years, launch once, watch it flop - and swear off it for good.

Why?

Three invisible blocks ruin it every time:

• They don’t really know what they know.

• They can’t step back far enough to see what they know as a product.

• They don’t understand that money flows to clear value - not to hours worked.

Result: most people stay trapped swapping hours for cash. The worst trade on earth if freedom is what you want.

Step Back From What You Know 

So how do you break that trap?

You step back just far enough to see what you know for what it really is - not a piece of you, but raw material you can shape, package and sell on repeat.

For me, it started in the simplest way possible - ten quiet minutes each morning at a café in Bali. A daily scribble to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper, where they couldn’t pretend to be special anymore.

Questions I’d ask myself:

• What’s obvious to me but magic to someone else?

• What do I know so well I could teach it half-asleep?

• What do I keep repeating in lessons and emails?

• How can I box this up so it’s clear - this is a product, not my personality?
  
  
  

Every time I did this, it made the knowledge feel separate and that distance is the trick. That’s how my first Kajabi membership began, then audiobooks, webinars, workshops. Each one started as a messy brain dump, turned into a test offer, and either flopped or started printing money.

Today, AI makes this distance instant. No more notebooks and hours connecting dots by hand. I dump my raw thoughts into ChatGPT and it mirrors back the patterns, cuts the waffle, and shows me exactly what’s worth selling.

That’s the real power of AI for founders in 2025 - it helps you to detach. It pulls what’s locked in your head into a clear, sellable shape, faster than your perfectionist brain ever will.

MVP Is The Way

The secret is embarrassingly simple:

Launch a minimum viable product.

Kill it fast if it flops.

Improve it if it works.

Repeat.

That’s how I turned draining English lessons into a membership that paid my expenses while I read Murakami at a café and travelled the world (and to this day, it still brings in a rather substantial stream of revenue). 

It’s how we built the AI Consultant Certification. Version 1.0 was a focused set of trainings to prove the concept and get real student results fast. Now it’s a flagship programme - version 3.0 - with a clear student path, robust frameworks, live mentorship, and polished recordings.

Same with Bogdan’s high-ticket automations mentoring. It started lean to test if people would pay for deep, hands-on help. Now it runs as a full evergreen offer, with a sales team filling his calendar.

Every one of these started small.

No drama when something flopped.

No tears when we killed it.

I didn’t do this once. I did it dozens of times. Some MVPs bombed so hard I buried them the same week. But each failure made the next launch sharper. 

One hit funds the next test. That’s how you build a quiet money printing machine while everyone else stays stuck in the perfection marathon.

But: Does Information Sell in the Age of AI?

AI can feel overwhelming. ChatGPT can spit out vast amounts of content for you to study but if you’re not already an expert, you’ll never really know: is this right? Should I start with this module - or is it too advanced? Am I just wasting time here?

This is exactly where your course, membership, or group programme comes in. It’s not just information - it’s a curated path that gets people from A to Z without the guesswork.

So, here’s the truth: people don’t need more information.

What they need is curation and real knowledge.

What’s the difference?

Most people mix up information and knowledge. Information is theory - what you skim in the first chapter of a business textbook. Knowledge is what’s left after you’ve launched ten MVPs, killed the losers, and scaled the one that stuck.

Information is facts.

Knowledge is facts plus your scars, your shortcuts, your experience.

That’s what people pay for.

The Three Types of Knowledge That Print Money

Not every idea needs to be a mega course. Not every bit of know-how should become a certification. Match the format to what people actually want, and what they’re ready to buy.

I use three:

Pop Knowledge - quick, snackable, entertaining. Cheat sheets, resource packs, prompt libraries. Good for reach and an easy entry sale.

Crafted Knowledge - structured, step-by-step, designed to deliver a clear result. Workshops, bootcamps, cohort programmes. This is a mid-tier in your ecosystem. 

Specialist Knowledge - deep, niche, often technical. Niche certifications, personal or group mentoring. This is where you charge premium not only for what you know but also helping people implement it. 

The strongest online businesses run all three.

Your Next Move Now?

Stop hoarding what you know in your head.

Stop waiting for “perfect”.

Turn one tiny piece of it into an offer - now.

Ship it ugly.

Watch how real buyers react.

That signal is worth more than a thousand hours of overthinking.

Do it once. Then again. Then again.

Keep going and you’ll never fear AI or competition again.

Your knowledge becomes your leverage.

Your products become your quiet money printing machine.