There always comes a time when we have to expand. We as humans are gifted beyond our wildest imagination, and there is so much we can do. I'm typing on this laptop, and I'm amazed at how this thing works. Are you sure God didn't create this? Well, He did because he created the people who created it. We are powerful. We are mighty and majestic. Whatever great word you want to throw out there, that's what we are. Look around you at all of the technology that you use on a daily basis. Even beyond what you have access to, look at the technology that makes the world turn. There are some amazing things in our world that we take for granted every day. As I started to think about that, I started to realize that I could be and do so much more. I started to ask myself—why should I settle for less? Why should I settle for one lane and one stream of income? No matter what you do for a living, there are always one or two more things you could be doing to earn money and leave a mark on the world. We just don't always think about it that way. We get so consumed in the one thing we're doing that we don't make time for anything else. We tell ourselves that there isn't enough time in the day. We tell ourselves that we shouldn't have our hands in too many cookie jars. Well, if you eat one cookie for too long, you may grow allergic to it and not be able to eat it anymore. You might as well try a few others, so you can have some variety in your life. Don't get so used to just one thing. Don't get stuck doing one thing for the rest of your life. Find ways to create an impact on the world and get out of your box. You're too talented to only do one or two things. You're selling yourself short. My mobile detail guy, Johnathan, always reminds me that we're only using 10 percent of our brains. I don't know where he read that, but I think I've heard it somewhere too. It's scary to think that it could be right. I'd like to at least get to 15 percent, sheesh. I've come to realize that we have so much more in us if we just believe and work for it. I believe that I can find a way to expand any brand in a profitable way if I look at it long enough. I believe that no matter how much a person or company is doing, I can find at least one more way they could be doing more and earning more. I'm doing the same thing with myself. I count my streams of income in a very weird and unfair way, but it helps me process things more abundantly. For example, this book: I could count it as one stream of income, but I count it as six or more. The reason is because I count Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Kobo as separate streams of income. The reason I count each of them as a stream of income is because they are all different companies cutting me a check. Yes, another company owns a couple of those e-readers, but on my royalty statement it's a separate sale with a separate name. They also serve different types of people. Physical books are marketed to and bought by certain types of people. One e-reader may be affordable to one group and another e-reader affordable to a different group. Some e-readers are only on certain types of phones. Each outlet serves a different group of people. No one person has all of the outlets, so I count them as different streams of income. It may not make sense to you, but it helps me see abundantly and realize all of the earning opportunities.

Let me explain further how I expanded my brand, so maybe you can look at your own brand in order to see if there are any ways you can tap into a couple of these markets yourself. Or it may help you discover a totally new area that I haven't tapped into.

First, I Became an Author.

I wrote my first book in 2007. That was actually my second stream of income because I was working a full-time job. I was expanding my brand into my gifts. Until you leave your job, then your job is a part of your brand. The book is technically one stream of income, but I counted it as more because I counted a stream for every company that cut me a check. Back then it was Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and Borders. Those were the main ones I received sales from.

Then, I Became a Speaker.

After writing a book I thought the next thing I needed to do was spread the word about it, and what better way to do that than to speak? Speaking is one stream of income in my mind although you might speak to several different organizations. When I branched into different topics of speaking, then I started to split up my streams of income because business conferences, relationship conferences, and sports conferences are totally different arenas, and rarely do speakers enter all three. I eventually entered all three.

Then, I Became a Screenwriter.

I'm just sharing this because I did it. I didn't make any money from it, but I was offered $1,500 to write someone else's screenplay. I turned it down. I figured that since I was an author, I could also write a screenplay and become a filmmaker because I saw other people doing it. I wrote the screenplay and actually signed a few Hollywood actresses that I'd seen on some of my favorite TV shows growing up with letters of intent. I was excited, but I didn't pursue it too much. Had I accepted the $1,500 to write for that local filmmaker, it would have been another stream of income.

Then, I Became a Ghostwriter.

Because I was writing my own books and doing it fairly easy, I thought I'd venture out and write books for others. I still do that today. The first book I wrote was for an NFL player, and I did it for free. Then I wrote a book for a woman with an amazing story and charged her $2,300 total. Then I upped my price to $10,000, and I started writing for celebrities and other pro athletes. I actually just finished one last month for a celebrity client. The ghostwriting has stuck with me over the years. I'm moving on up to $20,000 because it gets harder every time I do it. I know some people who charge $50,000 and get a percentage of the royalties. I read that the woman who wrote Hillary Clinton's book made $500,000. Ghostwriting could be lucrative if you have the gift and the patience to do it.

Then, I Became an Author Consultant.

Not everyone can afford ghostwriting, but they still want to get their books out. I started consulting authors on how to write and publish their books. I charged $500 starting out and then moved up to $1,500 and then to $2,500. Consulting is a great business as well.

Then, I Became a Relationship Coach.

My first book was about relationships, and women had more questions after reading it. One day I was on a free teleseminar, and the guy said, “If you've written a self-help book, then you could coach people on that same subject.” I was like, wow, that's a great idea. Before that, I was draining myself answering all these questions in the Facebook inbox. Then I switched it up and started converting the leads into clients. I told them I'd love to help them but due to my schedule they'd have to sign up for coaching as one of my premium clients in order for me to fit them in. I started out charging $25/hour. Some of the women hiring me were older than my mother, so I couldn't charge real money at 24 and 25 years old—at least I didn't think I could. I had two days off a week from my full-time job so on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I'd book my coaching sessions. I didn't tell anyone I was working a full-time job. I'd just tell them that my only two days with openings were Tuesday and Wednesday. It made me sound packed, and it helped me convert. It was great that I was off on weekdays too because if I had been off on Saturdays and Sundays, that would have looked a little odd.

Then, I Became a Life Coach.

Life coaching is different than relationship coaching because some people just want to get their life in order. They want to go over their goals and make a plan. Some people who come to me for life coaching don't want to talk about relationships, so I count it as separate stream of income and line of work.

Then, I Became a Business Coach.

Business coaching is totally separate from life coaching and relationship coaching because business coaching is helping people form their for-profit or nonprofit companies. I help them come up with their mission statement, find their lane, identify their target audience, and develop their products. In business coaching, we don't discuss relationships or life in general. There are those people who will buy a block of sessions and talk about a different topic each session; I just consider them a client in three different areas. I started out coaching at $25/hour. I don't get to coach as much now, and the most I've been able to bring myself to charge is $350/hour. I know there are coaches who charge $1,500 to $10,000 an hour, but that's a lot and I'm not there yet.

Then, I Formed Online Courses.

• For the Love of Me: This was my first course. I'd built my Twitter following talking mostly about relationships, so people were hungry for relationship wisdom. There was a reality show on TV at the time called For the Love of Ray J, so I spinned off of it and titled my course “For the Love of Me.” I made it a 12-week course and charged $75 for it. The people who signed up paid $25/month. I had about 125 people sign up, so that totaled $9,375. At that time, I was still on my full-time job earning $1,200 to $1,800/month, so this course was great money for me. I taught it by phone on Tuesday nights from 9 pm to 10 pm. I was on to something. I got the idea from the same guy who taught me about the timely pitch, life coaching, and now group coaching. He said, “If you run out of time and you can't do as much one-on-one coaching, then you can do group coaching.” I just took that to mean teaching a course by phone. He didn't say that specifically, but I always took a nugget of info and developed it in my mind in a way that would fit me. I had to come up with the payment structure, the method of delivery for the course, the subject matter, and the length. I learned a lot from that first run. It was a great run.
• The Love School: The next time I taught a love course I changed the name because the other one was outdated. I cut down the lessons to eight weeks, and I made the price a one-time fee because a few people defaulted on their monthly payments in my first course. I actually can't remember how much I charged for the course, but it did well enough for me to keep going.
• Entrepreneur University: I branched out of the love courses because I realized that I was becoming a pretty good entrepreneur and that I had some insight that I could teach others. I made this course a six-week course, and I charged $350 for it. I only taught it live once, and I had 10 people sign up for it. It was much less popular than the love stuff, but it earned $3,500 for six hours of work. That was much better than my job was paying me for six hours, so I was happy with that. I actually can't remember if I was still on my job or not when I taught this course.
• Birth Your Book Program: I wanted to create a course to teach people how to write and publish their own book. The ghostwriting and author consulting had slowed down, and I wanted to make a product that was easily affordable but packed with info. I really gave this course away because it cost only $19.99. And to think, that same course is on my site for $199 today. I gave it away at first just because I thought no one would want it, but hundreds bought it to my surprise. I stopped counting at about 110 people or so.
• The Life Coaching Certification Program: This course was my biggest baby. I took it very seriously. All of these courses I've created are a form of life coaching. I consider my books and my speeches a form of life coaching as well. In this course, I wanted to give away the game. I wanted to teach people how to build a successful coaching/consulting business from A to Z. I looked around at other courses, and I beat their prices by $1,000 and charged $1,500 for my course. The first time I taught it I had about 20 people sign up, so that was $30,000 I earned. I was blown away. This course made me the proudest because I'm teaching a six-figure blueprint for life coaches for only $1,500, and I earned more than my measly job paid me in a year. For this course I went the extra mile and wrote a textbook and a workbook with exams. It took me about three days at a beach house to get those things prepared, and then I hit the ground running. I figured I could teach the course three or four times a year and earn six figures from that course alone. It was a great idea and a great investment with double pay because not only am I being compensated for my hard-earned knowledge, but also I'm blessing others who want to do what I've done. I love this course the most, and I still teach it.
• Real Love University: I took a break from the love courses for a while because I just got tired of talking about love. I realize now that people never get tired of talking about love. I had to come back to my first love, so in 2014 or so I created the Real Love University and made it a six-weeks course. I charged $197 for the course at first, but then I dropped the price to $97. Hundreds of people have taken it, and if I marketed it for real, there would probably be about 500 to 1,000 people who would sign up. I get about 100 people each course without marketing it; it just sits on my site and gets organic traffic. I don't care to get too many people in the course because I give out a workbook, and I don't want to be mailing out a thousand workbooks. I also do a Q&A for 30 minutes each class, and I hate hanging up the phone with people still on the line with questions. I love this course way more than the love courses I taught in the past.
• Tony Gaskins Academy: This website is being built right now. I should be done by the time you're reading this book. This is my baby. I'll house all of my courses on this one site. I have many more courses I'm going to create, and they will all go there. This site will become like an online university. When we reach the point when people are opting out of college because of the debt and the lack of jobs that a degree can get you, this site will be where they turn. I'll be teaching every aspect of a life of peace, happiness, and prosperity.

Then, I Created Audio Projects.

• For The Love of Me: I took the recordings from my course and put them on iTunes for sale at $9.99 per lesson.
• Spoken Word: Remember I told you I was a poet in my former days? Well, I tapped back into the gift, and I wrote some love pieces and some motivational pieces and put them on iTunes, Google Play, and all the other digital outlets.

Then, I Created Phone Applications.

• iLifeCoach: This was my first app. This app had about 400 of my quotes from Twitter and also about 60 common questions that I would get asked as a life coach. I answered the questions in blog format. The app only cost me $1,800 to make, and I charged $0.99 for it. It made the money back rather quickly and generated great sales because at that time no one in my industry had an app. I was ahead of the curve. That's how that name was still available in the iPhone app store. We put it on iPhone and the Google phones as well. I've discontinued the app because we are updating it.
• iLifeCoach by Tony Gaskins: This was my second app, and it was a free app on an app system that a lot of churches use. I liked it, but it still wasn't what I wanted. I kept it for a while and paid the $155/month for a year or so, then I let it go. I'm building something else right now that will top those other two apps.

Then I Created Workbooks.

• CEO of Me Workbook: This workbook is on Amazon, and it's an entrepreneur's workbook. I basically teach my Entrepreneur University course and the Birth Your Book program in this workbook. I could have charged a lot more but I only made it $30.
• The Real Love Tour Workbook: This workbook is for my Real Love Tour that I'll mention next. I created this workbook and sold it separately on Amazon as well. It's a guide to self-love, I'd say. I just wanted people to be able to work themselves through some of their relationship issues.

Then I Created My Own Tours.

I produce my own tours each year. I consider this different than just being a speaker because I'm in control and the profit margins are different. I wanted to be in control of my events. I'm sure you can tell by my book that I'm a very hands-on person. I was doing events, and they would have an over-the-top host, a bunch of unnecessary vendors, and some pretty bad speakers. I'm not the best speaker in the world, but I know how to deliver a message in a real way, and my guests always come back a second time. I wanted to do it my way. I didn't want all the glitz and glam because I couldn't afford it. I knew that if I used a nice ballroom and had a good microphone and some comfortable chairs, I could pull it off. I'd recommend this to anyone who has taken the time to build their following online. It's not that hard. I find the venue on Google, set up my ticket page on Eventbrite, get a flyer made by my designer, and then start posting the flyer online. It's that simple. A couple days before the event, I email the guest list and ask for a few volunteers. I get the people I need and meet them at the venue a little early. They help me set up the check-in table and my book table, and I show them how to check people in. I give everyone his or her job and we make it happen. I'm working with complete strangers. For these people with a servant's heart, it's a cool thing because they get VIP treatment because they are coming to see me. They get to see me first, take a picture, and help produce the event. At a lot of stops it would only be the volunteers and me. I like doing it this way instead of having my own team that travels with me. Having my own team means I'm spending a lot more money to produce an event. It also means that some people get complacent, and they find the loopholes in my operation. Once a person settles in and they are able to scope out the operation, then they are comfortable enough to slip a bill in their pocket here and there. They get comfortable and can invite friends to let them in free without telling me. They can get comfortable in all kinds of ways. By my having volunteers, they don't know me yet. They don't know the system or how it works. It's hard to become a criminal the first day on the job because you just don't know if there is a system in place that will get you caught up. You also don't know the person next to you, so you don't know if this person is a raving fan and will be watching you like a hawk and tell if he or she sees you do something wrong. I thought about those things when stringing together a tour on a small budget. People started asking me how I produce tours because their tours kept failing. I just keep it simple.

Then I Started a Real Estate Investment Company.

I started this company just to build more real assets. I consider my books and products assets, but I also wanted other types of assets. Everything I do has to have a purpose beyond money, so with the real estate I'm doing something different. I want to buy small houses and rent them to single parents or small families who are working hard but just not making a lot of money. I don't want to be a typical landlord. I give my tenants the month of December rent-free. That's pretty much unheard of in the real estate investment industry, but I think more property owners should start doing that. The way it started was one of my tenants was late on her December rent because of Christmas shopping for her three kids. I already had the idea to do it, but I had forgotten about it. When I received a text from her that she was late, I told her that I give my tenants the month of December off and to enjoy Christmas with her kids. She told me she was shocked, and she's never had a landlord do that her entire life. Those words made me feel good. I thought I would be taken for granted and that it would cause a problem with future payments, but to my surprise it made me more appreciated; rent payments come every month and on time. I've paid rent for years myself, and I know how good I would have felt if they had told me I didn't have to pay rent in December.

Then I Started a Referral Business.

I started making so many connections and I knew so many people that I just became a middleman. I would connect people and get a cut of the profits. I'd have the service provider pay me, or I'd just add my fee on top of the service. It was just another payment for the hard work and hands-on approach that I'd taken to building my brand.

Then I Started a T-Shirt Line.

I mention this because I did it, and it can be very lucrative. At the time it just wasn't for me. I wanted to have motivational sayings on shirts, but I spoke mostly on relationships. I sold some shirts when I promoted them, but I didn't feel like promoting T-shirts. I felt like it cheapened my brand too much on a very large scale. Representing myself on deals may also cheapen my brand, but only the people who wrote in to book me knew that. My entire following didn't know I was a one-man show. When I started promoting T-shirts, it just seemed tacky to me, and I didn't like it. I think it's a great idea for many others, but for me it's not where I wanted to be. I'll most likely sell T-shirts on my tours in the future just because it'll be in a closed environment, and it'll be relevant to that tour so it will make much more sense.

That's All, Folks.

I'm sure there are a few other things I did along the way that I'm overlooking, but if it's not popping up in my mind, then I'm sure it was insignificant. I wanted to walk through those streams of income with you just so you could really get a visual of what I mean. I break down those streams into over 30 or 40 streams of income. Honestly I stopped counting because I already feel abundantly blessed. I share that not to brag or boast but just to give you an idea of all the possible ways you can expand your brand. There are many other ways that I haven't tapped into yet, and they may come in the future. I really just want you to know that you don't have to settle for one stream of income. You can do many things and earn a purpose-based living.