Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend
It’s possible to build a meaningful business on the side as an academic. It’s even possible to grow your business into something that makes more than your day job. I did it, and I’ve been helping others do the same for the last 2 years (without letting their on-campus work slip at all).
“Digital entrepreneurship is a great fit for academics wanting to help more people by expanding their impact beyond their department.”
What is a semester-proof business?
A semester-proof business is a term, coined by me, that describes the type of business that is most feasible for a full time academic or professor to operate. It is a business that remains profitable no matter how crazy, busy, and overwhelming the academic semester gets. It’s how I run my business as a full-time Senior Lecturer teaching 12 hours every semester.
My clients who are academic entrepreneurs have told me that they have every intention of growing an operating their business consistently. However, once the semester begins, academic work take priority and their business becomes an afterthought.
Academic work can get soooo draining! So it leads beginning academic entrepreneurs to neglect their business.
And then they feel guilty that they have neglected something that fulfills them.
So they avoid it.
And a whole semester goes by with zero progress made in their business.
This happens to me too! 2021 was probably the most challenging year in academia that I’ve ever experienced. However, it was the most profitable year in business I had had to date!
So, despite me spending less time on my business than ever, my business went on to do the best numbers ever because of how I built my business and the systems I put in place!
My business was semester-proof.
How to Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend
I will walk you through the steps that I took to build my semester-proof business as well as what I would have done differently to achieve profitability faster. This guide is the text version of my FREE mini-course, Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend. Sign up here for access to the video lessons, audio lessons, and resources.
Here is the outline of the mini-course (You may use the links to jump to any lesson in this guide):
Lesson 1: Digital products business are perfect for academic entrepreneurs
Lesson 2: 16 Types of digital products (you may be overlooking) that are perfect for academics
Lesson 3: How I built a six figure business digital products business as a full time academic
Lesson 4: How to schedule your time to run a six figure semester-proof business
Lesson 5: The 5-Step Roadmap for building and operating a semester-proof business year round
Lesson 6: Scaling to six figures with an aligned offer based on your unique background
Lesson 1: Digital Products Businesses are Perfect for Academic Entrepreneurs
I believe that digital entrepreneurship is a great fit for academics who want to help more people by expanding their impact beyond their department or school.
The biggest misconception that I hear from academics is that they believe that building and growing an online business has to take a lot of time and energy. Time and energy that is already being depleted by academic responsibilities.
And they are right!
Entrepreneurship CAN take a lot of time and energy. But it doesn’t have to! There are certain types of digital business models that you can build, grow, and maintain on less than 5 hours a week.
So, ask yourself…can you spare 5 hours a week to build and operate a six figure business?
If the answer is no, thank you for joining me! You don’t have to continue reading anymore of this guide.
But if your answer is yes and you do think that it’s worth it to spend 5 hours a week to build and maintain a six figure business throughout the busy semester, then you are in the right place!
I did it! And I’m going to show you how you can too.
Now, let’s get started. Let’s build your semester-proof business!
Lesson 2: 16 Digital Products (you may be overlooking) that are Perfect for Academics
So, remember when I said running a digital business doesn’t have to take a lot of time and energy?
Well, it totally depends on what you sell and how you sell it. A lot of people (aspiring entrepreneurs) go into coaching, consulting, or done-for-you services.
Delivering those types of services can take a lot of time and energy! And you can totally make those things part of your business. I have!
However, this video series is about selling digital products, not services. Digital products that can be sold and distributed with no participation from you. Technology (or systems) does all of the work in the transaction.
So, what qualifies as a digital product?
I like to classify digital products into three overarching categories:
Digital course
Ebook
Template
All three can be created ahead of time and sold on autopilot without you participating in the sales transaction.
Now, there is a lot of variation within these product categories that you may not have considered. You may have already created a digital product or have an idea for one. But I encourage you to keep reading for inspiration on how to expand on your ideas or create more products.
Digital Course
This can be defined as teaching something in a prerecorded way. A misconception that I see a lot is that a digital course has to be long with 5 modules and 10 lessons in each module.
I actually discourage that type of digital course when you are just getting started.
Here are some other “digital course” options:
A masterclass on how to do one thing
A workshop (for example, I have a CV workshop for grad students)
A video series (like what I’m doing now)
A live talk presentation recording
Tech tutorials
A workshop series
Recorded case studies
Recorded interviews
And you can be creative with these ideas! Your digital course doesn’t have to look one way. It could be:
A voice over a slide deck
A video of you (talking head)
A video of you with text overlay
An audio course for people to listen on the go (perfect for teaching languages)
It can look however you want as long as it provides value to your ideal customer.
Ebook
An ebook is a digital pdf of something you’ve written. The misconception here is that it has to be long or your life’s work.
I wrote my book #GRADBOSS: A Grad School Survival Guide (less than 100 pages, and most of it is worksheets) over a summer.
Here are some ideas for an ebook that you may want to sell as a digital product:
A workbook
A planner (like my #GRADBOSS Planner and Reflection Journal for Grad Students)
A collection of case studies
An audiobook
An instruction manual
Template
When you hear the word “template”, your first thought may be like mine. I always think of Excel templates; where the frame is created by you and the consumer fills in the rest of the information.
Really, the purpose of a template is to save someone time so they don’t need to create it from scratch themselves.
Here are some examples of templates that you could sell as a digital product:
A spreadsheet (if you create a budget spreadsheet template, make sure you are super specific to the audience) (for example, a budget spreadsheet template for a chemistry lab manager)
Management system template for Trello, Asana, Notion, ClickUp, etc (I have Trello templates for grad students and my consulting clients)
Lesson plans/worksheets
Outlines for writing or presentations or applications
Email templates (I’ve created email templates to help grad student communicate with their professors, advisors, and students)
So, as you can see, there are so many different types of digital products that you could create and I hope that this gave you a lot of ideas that you could actually create…this weekend!
Remember, this doesn’t need to be the best thing you’ve ever created. And it doesn’t need to be the biggest thing or the only thing you create.
The only requirement is that it helps someone.
So who do you think you can help with a digital product? And which one of these digital product ideas would you like to create?
Don’t have time to finish this guide now?
FREE MINI-COURSE: Plan Your Semester-Proof Business This Weekend
Lesson 3: How I Built a Six Figure Digital Products Business as a Full Time Academic
I officially started The Academic Society in 2017. And my first product was called the Grad School Toolkit. It is a collection of Trello templates to help grad students organize their life and school responsibilities in one place.
And only one person bought it.
To be honest, I didn’t make enough offers. I didn’t actually sell it! I just expected grad students to find out what I had to offer and immediately enter their credit card numbers.
I was so naive.
My audience was super small. And I didn’t have the confidence that I have now. So I gave up trying to sell it and started offering my Grad School Toolkit for free.
And guess what; no one downloaded it! Not until January of 2018 when 4 people signed up for my FREE product.
The four people who signed up for my free offer in January 2018
However, as time went on and I grew my audience and my confidence, the Grad School Toolkit became one of my most popular digital products.
As of now, 959 grad students have downloaded my product!
And if I were to go back, I wouldn’t have chickened out and made the product free. I would sell it. It was only $9! A no-brainer price point for a grad student.
I actually made $0 in my business until 2019.
I started learning more and more about the people I served. What they were struggling with and how they were talking about it.
My audience of grad students were struggling with time management and organization. But no one wanted to pay money to learn about how to master time management and productivity.
What they told me was that they were struggling with getting all of their work done because they were so overwhelmed with the amount of work they had. And that overwhelm caused them to procrastinate and burnout.
So I created a program to help them get their work done. And it was a hit! For the first time, I had made money in my business and it was an amazing feeling!
In 2019, I made $1400. This was revenue that came from selling my 3 flagship digital products:
FOCUS - an accountability and productivity program for grad students
Grad School Prep - a prep course for incoming grad students with a focus on time management skills necessary to succeed in grad school
#GRADBOSS: A Grad School Survival Guide - my ebook on how I survived getting a PhD in Mathematics
In 2020, I had built so much authority in my niche from selling my digital products and creating content on my YouTube channel that I was asked to create a summer program for McNair Scholars. And that program alone brought in $60,000 in revenue.
And I literally took the content and resources that I had created in the past and packaged it up for that specific program. (You’ll learn how to do this in the last lesson of this mini-course.)
In 2021, my business made over $100,000 before August! And that’s when I realized that I could help other academics do the same!
So here we are!
And remember, I spend less than 5 hours a week during the semester on my business. And that is possible for you too!
You may want to go back to the previous lesson and get serious about the type of digital product you want to create.
My Product Suite
#GRADBOSS Planner (ebook category) - free
Morning Routine Worksheet (ebook category) - free
Grad School Toolkit (template category) - free
#GRADBOSS: A Grad School Survival Guide (ebook category) - $10/$20 on Amazon
FOCUS (digital course category) - $97
Grad School Prep (digital course category) - $197
Grad School Mindset for McNair Scholars (digital course category) - $3500
Grad School Prep for McNair Scholars (digital course category) - $5000
The Semester-Proof Business Course (digital course category) - $297
The Semester-Proof Business Idea Mapping Session (consulting) - $297
The Semester-Proof Business Workday + Retainer (consulting) - $5000
The Semester-Proof Business Idea Mapping Session and Workday + Retainer are the only consulting services I have. Everything else runs on autopilot with minimal involvement from me. Especially during the semester when I’m teaching 4 classes each semester.
It took me a long time and lots of courses and coaching to really understand selling and how to sell on autopilot (what it takes to build a semester-proof business). When you solidify your first (or next) offer, I have a course called The Semester-Proof Business Course that you’ll want to check out to learn the secret sauce for building and growing your semester-proof business on less than five hours per week.
Bonus: List of Tools/Resources I use to run a Semester-Proof Business
Website - Squarespace ($26/month, you get a discount on a business account with a .edu email address)
Email - Convertkit ($9/month)
Digital Product Hosting - Teachable (free)
Payment Processing - Stripe/PayPal (free)
Design - Canva (free)
That’s $39 a month in business expenses for someone just getting started. There aren’t many other business models with profit margins that big!
Please note that I am an affiliate for Convertkit and Teachable, so at no additional cost to you, I will receive a small commission for referring anyone to paid plans on those platforms.
Lesson 4: How to Schedule your Time to Run a 6-Figure Semester-Proof Business
When you start your business, you’ll find that there are a lot of big projects to get done. Projects like creating your offer, building your website, setting up how you’ll accept payment, choosing your brand colors and fonts, etc.
And these things can take a lot of time.
Here’s a quick secret. Most of those projects aren’t necessary for you to complete before you start making offers. And this is where entrepreneurs get stuck and waste a lot of time.
Doing projects.
But guess what? Projects don’t make you money. You have to actually sell your product to become profitable.
And that is always where I start when building my business work schedule!
I prioritize the business operations that lead to sales! And I automate everything that I can. So that I only have to do the bare minimum to operate my business.
This is actually part of what I do with my consulting clients inside of The Semester-Proof Business Workday + Retainer Package. I create a 5 hour business workweek that includes exactly what they should be doing each week to make sales.
Here are a couple of checklists I’ve created for my clients in Trello that tells them exactly what they should be working on each week and each month. So they don’t have to guess or spend energy making those decisions.
My Personal Weekly Business Schedule
Saturday - batch film 2-3 YouTube videos (I do this once or twice a month)
Sunday - edit and upload 1 video per week, post on social media, make promo videos with subtitles, write email newsletter (about 2 hours of work)
Tuesday/Thursdays - work on big projects and post on social media (these are my non-teaching days, so I’ll work on business for 1-2 hours)
Everything else that I do is automated with systems, email sequences, and sales funnels.
Lesson 5: The 5-Step Roadmap for Building and Operating a Semester-Proof Digital Business Year Round
A Business Model that Works for You
The first step is to choose a business model that works for you and your lifestyle. Most business coaches and consultants are helping their clients grow a business to replace their income so that they can be a full time entrepreneur.
Maybe that is what you want.
But I know that’s not my goal! I love my life as an academic and I love teaching. And I can’t imagine not teaching math to students. So I chose a business model with those goals in mind.
A digital products business is perfect for me because I can choose when and how long I want to work on and in my business.
Questions to consider when choosing a business model:
How much time do I want to spend working on my business?
How much time do I want to spend with clients?
Do I have the capacity to work with clients one-on-one during the semester?
If so, how many clients can I work with during a semester before I burn out?
Is a digital products business something that aligns with where I am in my life now?
Quickly Create a Product
After deciding what kind of business you want to have, the next step is to create the offer. And if you choose to create a digital product, my recommendation is to create it as quickly as possible.
It doesn’t need to be perfect. Why?
Your first product is typically a guess at what YOU think your ideal customer will want. As you learn more about your ideal customer, you’ll be able to revise and update your product or create something even better for them.
So my recommendation is to not be a perfectionist. As long as your product helps your customer, it’s valuable. The bells and whistles will come after you understand more about what they want and how they talk about what they want.
And remember, we want to prioritize money-making, profitable tasks. The creation of your product isn’t a profitable task. It doesn't make you money until you sell it! So the goal is to start selling as soon as possible!
Launch Plan
Launching your digital product should be a major event! You don’t want to complete your digital product and tell your network that it’s ready to be purchased.
That’s how you get into the situation I was in; no one buying my product.
Insead, you’ll want to create a launch plan. A plan that gets your ideal customer excited about your product before it’s even created!
Before I wrote my book, I told my audience all about it. I told them that I wanted to write a book about surviving grad school and asked them what topics they thought I should cover.
They gave me 10 main topics. And those topics became the 10 chapters of my book. I knew they would buy it because it was exactly what they told me they wanted.
Also, I brought my audience of grad students through every stage of the process with me: the writing, the editing, the formatting, the cover art, etc.
Then there was a countdown to launch day!
At this point, my audience was primed and ready to purchase my book on launch day! I sold about 30 copies of my book on the first day!
That was a huge win for me!
So, take some time to think about how you will launch your digital product so that your ideal customer is ready to purchase and you don’t have to “convince” them to want it.
Create your Own Business Handbook
This is my favorite step! I’m all about the data, systems, and operations of a business. Something that I do for my consulting clients is to create a business handbook and dashboard for them.
Your business handbook should include your products and services as well as the prices for them. It should also include a profit plan for the year and each quarter. (We do quarterly business planning sessions inside of The Semester-Proof Business Course.) It should include the big projects you are working on. The SOPs (standard operating procedures) and KPIs (key performance indicators) of your business along with your daily, weekly and monthly tasks.
Build a Funnel that Makes Sales Year Round
Funnels are the secret sauce of my semester-proof business. Here’s an example of one of my funnels:
I have one funnel that helps me sell my course Grad School Prep. Here’s how it works. An incoming grad student will watch one of my YouTube videos where the action step leads them to sign up for my free masterclass called What to Expect in Your First Semester of Grad School. The student will have to give me their email address to be able to access the masterclass. The masterclass gives lots of value and also prompts them to purchase Grad School Prep.
If they purchase, wonderful! If not, they go through my 10-day mail sequence inside of Convertkit that gives value but also shows them why they need my course. If they don’t purchase it, I downsell them my ebook instead.
Here’s a sneak peek of what that automation looks like inside of Convertkit (my email management tool and the biggest part of my semester-proof business strategy):
At the time of this screenshot, 450 graduate students had entered the funnel! (Now almost 600 students have gone through the funnel.)
Did you notice that everything in the funnel is automated? Beyond creating the YouTube video (which lives forever on YouTube for more students to watch everyday), I don’t have to do any additional work to make a sale.
This is how I make sales throughout the semester only spending 5 hours or less on my business each week.
It took me a long time and lots of courses and coaching to really understand selling and how to sell on autopilot. When you solidify your first (or next) offer, I have a course called The Semester-Proof Business Course that you’ll want to check out to learn the secret sauce for building and growing your semester-proof business on less than five hours per week.
Lesson 6: Scaling to Six Figures with an Aligned Offer Based on Your Unique Background
As you’ve probably noticed from my story in Lesson 3, I didn’t make it to six figures from my low ticket digital products alone. But I definitely could have.
One of my business coaches, James Wedmore, scaled his business to $1M with a $97 digital course. It’s possible! But I don’t know if it would have been possible for me without spending way more time and money on my business than I felt the need to.
The thing that helped me scale to six figures so quickly was creating an aligned high ticket offer.
So, what do I mean by aligned?
I mean using your authority, your interests, and your past experiences to create a very specific offer at a price point of at least four figures.
How I Created My Six-Figure/Year Grad School Prep for McNair Scholars Program.
The Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program is a summer research program for undergraduates who are underrepresented and first generation to help them learn about academic research and graduate school.
Their biggest goal is to have their students go to graduate school and obtain a terminal degree. Well, I was a McNair Scholar. And I achieved the goal. I got my PhD in Mathematics.
Also, I built a business helping students survive grad school.
Who I am and what I do perfectly aligns with the mission of the McNair Scholars Program.
So, when I would get on calls with McNair directors to tell them about my summer program for their Scholars. It was a no-brainer! I was a perfect fit to work with them.
In the first year of creating that program, 10 McNair Programs signed on.
In the second year, 20 programs signed.
My goal is to work with 30 programs this year! 😱
So, once you get your digital products business up and running and build authority in your niche, I recommend looking back at your life and the steps you took to get to where you are now. How can you give back? How can you create something perfect for who you were back then?
If this story and business strategy resonated with you, you may be ready for the next step:
The Semester-Proof Business Course for Academic Entrepreneurs is right for you if:
You are an academic: professor, lecturer, adjunct, or researcher bound by your university’s academic calendar.
You want to sell (or do sell) the knowledge inside of your brain via coaching, consulting, digital courses, templates, books, workshops, digital products, etc.
Your business revenue plummets when the semester gets busy because you don’t have time to operate it.
You want a PLUG & PLAY process for a knowledge-based business to keep profitable when you don’t have time to run it yourself.
