Dearests,
I know the world is FTFO (freaking the fuck out) right now about Coronavirus (as we should be).
And that it’s calling forth change in every area of our lives – social, work, schooling, money.
I wanted to share with you my thoughts on it, and the opportunities that are possible during this time… so I’ve released a special podcast episode about it.
Listen below, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, PocketCast (or wherever else you listen to podcasts!)
Show Notes!
My wise elders:
You can read about them more here.
Illustration I created & shared on social media:
Ideas for earning money from home
- Design and sell tshirts on TeeSpring.
- Sell your expertise on Clarity.fm.
- Become an expert on JustAnswer.
- Private label products and dropship on Amazon. (For example: you buy wedding ornaments, then sell on Amazon. Amazon houses and ships for you!)
- Become a Virtual Assistant.
- Do online jobs through Fiverr – from social media, graphic design, illustration, voice overs, translation, programming and more. I adore Fiverr – I’ve hired people to create podcast music, give me intuitive readings and astrology readings, fix random stuff on my website, draw my husband like he’s a Simpsons character, research my family name – the possibilities are endless!)
- Sell ecourses (if you need help creating or marketing, this course is for you!)
- Sell your art as prints and products at RedBubble, Zazzle or Society6.
- Take online surveys through SurveyJunkie.
- Teach courses on Udemy.
- Promote books, courses and software to earn cash with affiliate marketing.
- User testing with websites like Analysia, StartUpLift, and User Testing.
- Tutor with Tutorfinder.
- Share a product that you love – from Thermomix to essential oils to makeup to clothes and build a network marketing business.
- Do freelance jobs through Smart Crowd, Clickworker and Upwork.
- Sell thrift store/op shop finds on eBay.
- Sell handmade arts + crafts on Etsy (you can also sell craft supplies on there!)
- Do online transcription at Rev.com.
- Use microinvesting sites like Acorns, Fundrise and StashInvest.
- Teach ESL online through Qkids, Dada ABC or Teachaway.
- Manage social media for businesses.
- Start a podcast (and then either sell advertising on it, or sell your own shit!)
- Licence your photos on Stocksy, Getty, Shutterstock or 123rf.
- Licence your artwork through Shutterstock or Dreamstime.
- Run a Kickstarter to fund a creative or entrepreneurial project.
- Be a designer on 99Designs.
- Sell art, prints or digital downloads on DeviantArt.
- Start a Youtube or Twitch channel.
- Do tasks on Mechanical Turk.
- Do email marketing with a niche newsletter (selling advertising, affiliate marketing or your own shit).
- Write a book + self-publish using Kindle Direct Publishing. (If you want help writing and marketing it, this course is for you!)
- Tutor, mentor or create a course on things you know.
- We deep dive into more income streams on my Money, Manifesting & Multiple Streams of Income course.
Sending you so much love, grace, resilience and adaptability!
P.S. Transcription below:
Leonie: (00:00)
[BEST THEME SONG EVER], Leonie Dawson has a podcast that she refuses to be mother fucking categorized, which is today why I’m creating a special episode of the podcast because I feel like I really fucking should; all about life and money in the time of Corona virus. I’m having lots of conversations with friends. I’ve got lots of clients asking me questions. So I wanted to spend some time today going through my thoughts on how to make money and create a new lifestyle while we’re going through coronavirus lockdown days. Um, now I want to preface this by saying I get it like this time is going to be really fucking difficult for an awful lot of people. And it’s really fucking weird because we haven’t experienced this kind of thing before. So it’s really normal to feel anxious and uncertain about what’s happening and how the fuck on earth you are going to cope with these changes.
Leonie: (01:01)
So in situations like this, I also immediately think of my three wise elders, which were kind of my matriarchs. That was my grandmother who lived to the age of 97. Her sister, Aunty Lucy, who lived to the age of 99 and Nan who just passed away at the age of 103, and these were strong and vibrant and fabulous women who were really well known in their community for being so gloriously happy and compassionate and lovely to other people. Um, and I would remember like saying to Gran, like, how are you today, Gran? And she’s like, well, I woke up and I was still breathing. So I, I thought to myself, today is going to be a good day. And the thing about these women is they had been through so fucking much, they had been through massive losses in their life. They, Nan had been through the blitz, uh, during the world war into England and being bombed.
Leonie: (02:05)
They’d been through the great depression, they’d been through Wars. Um, they had been through really fucking hard times and they’d suffered huge amounts of personal loss in losing children and grandchildren and their husbands and all that kind of stuff. And yet they were still incredibly light-filled and luminous and lovely. And so I think about them whenever shit hits the fan. And I think they’ve been, they’d been through some really, really big stuff too. And it just made them more resilient and more lovely than ever. So I wish upon you the spirit of Nan and granny and Aunty Lucy and may their dancing ways be with you as we dance through this particular challenge that we facing. So, um, with that out of the way, I want to say that there really is opportunity in every situation. And so I wanted to one, write this list for myself and um, and then share those thoughts along as well because it can be so it’s, it’s frightening and this situation is changing every single day.
Leonie: (03:13)
So we just kind of need to have a rethink and a re-format of what it might mean. So for me, when I think about what this coronavirus lockdown may look like, I realized it may just possibly be what the planet needs. Because here’s the thing in China where they’ve already had the lockdown and they’ve like, their factories have stopped and people aren’t driving to work and driving all over the place. There is a massive, a noticeable drop in their pollution levels and in there their emissions We know we are over consuming. We know we are taking too much on the planet. We know climate change is a real risk and Corona virus as difficult it might be, may actually be a good remedy for some of those things in terms of giving us a chance to be at home, live a home based, a lifestyle, reduce our consumption and start doing some more sustainable ways of living.
Leonie: (04:14)
So what do I mean by that? We’re going to be, it’s in some ways it’s an enforced sabbatical. It means staying at home. It means that more kids, are not able to go to school and need to begin homeschooling. Um, there’s over 435 million students already that have been locked down. I know here in Australia they’re considering the lockdown sooner rather than later. It’s not really if it’s going to happen, it’s a when situation. And so that means that we’re going to be spending a lot more time at home with our kids at home. And now what I wanted to say to you after having spent the last three years homeschooling, is that this time really will be a sweet memory. And yes, it’s going to be like challenging as you adjust to being in each other’s energy all the time. But it does adjust.
Leonie: (05:09)
And I found, I find my kids get along together a lot better when it’s just them and they’re kind of forced to work out their differences in a lot of ways. This is an opportunity to read books with them and make art and play board games and really give them the time to dream and imagine and discover their own soul. Because here’s the thing, like I believe that the pace of life that we’re living at right now isn’t really sustainable and doesn’t give us this opportunity to be with ourselves, discover the sweetness of our own soul. So in some ways I think this is a real gift and a real blessing for them. I was also read about Sir Isaac Newton, who in I think was like the 14 hundreds, was forced to go back to his small hometown and stop learning at Cambridge university because, uh, all of the educational facilities and schools were closed then too, to limit the bubonic plague.
Leonie: (06:11)
And that two years that he spent at home ended up being the most productive of his life. And he wrote and invented and came up with all these new thoughts because it was this enforced isolation, um, where he had to start listening to him himself thinking again. And I think, wow, that’s really exciting and we’re all being given this opportunity. This is also an amazing opportunity to build online income streams. I know this doesn’t happen overnight, but in some cases it can. Um, and yes, it would have been great if you’d started six months ago, a year ago, but guess what? The time is no better than now. And I’ve been teaching you about this stuff for so many years now and I know so many people have been putting it off. And so now I’m like, okay, we’ll build your online income streams, whether that’s creating a course, whether that’s writing a book, whether that’s taking advantage of any other kind of like online service offerings.
Leonie: (07:07)
And I’ll go through a whole big bunch of list of ideas as well of ways that you can get started online. Businesses are really, um, an amazing way to adapt and, um, to build extra income streams for yourself. And I want to say as well, like I know a lot of my people that listen and they, they do, they have a lot of, um, one-to-one clients face to face. And that may become more difficult in, in future months because everyone’s going to be needing to stay at home and self isolate. So for example, I’ve got a friend who’s a yoga teacher and a calm birth teacher. She’s transitioning her classes to be zoom based instead. Because here’s the thing, people are still going to need your services, um, in lots of different ways, but they need to be able to do it from home. So how can we adapt to more of an online learning environment?
Leonie: (08:01)
How can you start offering over Skype or Zoom instead? Um, how can you share the gifts that you do have and the skills that you do have with the world without having to leave the home? Um, I’m also fascinated by the fact that schools and businesses are having to get people to work from home and learn from home and they’re finally starting to use technologies like Google classrooms for instance. Um, I’m seeing so many people are having their kids sent home and then they’re learning via Google classrooms. I mean, here’s the fucking thing. Like this opportunity has always been available to us and this is in some ways forcing us to, um, to really harness the power of them in terms like of like teleconferencing with for health services and stuff like that. We fucking should have been able to access this years ago. This is really going to force us. And force the world around us, um, to be able to use this technology more. Uh, what else was I going to say on that one? [inaudible]
Leonie: (09:09)
Leonie Dawson has a podcast and sometimes she says the stupid song when she’s trying to think of something to amuse herself. So, okay. Um, next thing is homeschooling. I know that like 480 million people worldwide have just been forced into being homeschoolers, um, that, that number will rise. Uh, and here’s what I say as somebody who is a former homeschooler is, it actually is a lot easier than you think. Don’t freak the fuck out about it. And I will do a podcast specifically about that for people who are being forced into homeschooling, what that can look like and how that can be a good fit for you and your family. Because for me, my experience was that the three years that we homeschooled was, uh, some of the most fulfilling and sweetest years of parenting for me. And it was amazing to see my kids bloom.
Leonie: (10:06)
Um, and it doesn’t have to be crazy hard. So that’s what I wanted to share first and foremost, but there’s so much more I can say. This also is an amazing opportunity to build the systems and income streams that you’ve been putting off because you’ve been so busy with your business. So I know like when I was going through like big business growth phases, I would have to have these spurts like every, I don’t know, three months or so where I would have to kind of go back and clean up the mess in a way and fix the systems and make sure that I was serving people in the best way possible as it was growing. And here’s the thing, when you’re a business is that it can be hard to take away time from that when you’re just trying to keep up with all of it.
Leonie: (10:53)
But this is an amazing opportunity for you to build the systems that you, your business needs and it’s also an amazing opportunity to build income streams that you’ve been putting off. You can also use this time to develop and begin executing a marketing plan and pre prepping content and social media for the next year as well. So, um, ideas for earning money from home. And this is not a comprehensive list whatsoever, but I just wanted to give you some ideas to strike your fancy. You could design and tell, sell t-shirts on Teespring. You could sell your expertise on clarity.fm You could become an expert on Just Answer. You could private label products and drop ship on Amazon. For example, if you buy wedding ornaments, then sell on Amazon and Amazon houses and ships for you. You could become a virtual assistant. You could do online jobs through Fiverr.
Leonie: (11:48)
That’s Fiverr with two R’s from social media, graphic design, illustration, voiceovers, translation programming and more. I absolutely love Fiverr. I’ve hired people to create podcast music. Obviously not for this one because I like to do dumb shit myself. I’ve hired people to give me intuitive readings and astrology readings, fixed random shit on my website, draw my husband like he’s a Simpson’s character. Research my family name. The possibilities really are motherfucking endless. You can sell e-courses on everything that you’ve ever learned about and know a little bit more than other people’s. You could sell your art as prints and products through Redbubble, Zazzle or Society6. You could take online surveys through survey junkie. Also, if you are struggling with keeping up some of these ideas, I will post this whole list over on Leoni dawson.com forward slash Corona. Yes, I just made up that you were up, but I will, um, take online surveys through survey junkie.
Leonie: (12:54)
You could teach courses on UDMY, that’s the letters U D M Y you could promote books, courses in software to earn cash through affiliate marketing. So for example, you’re going to Leoniedawson.com/affiliate. You can sign up to be an affiliate for all of my courses. So I’ve got 40 days to create and sell an online course, 40 days to finish your book, money manifesting, and multiple streams of income. I’ve got the get shit done club coming out soon. I’ve got anxiety balm. Um, and if you share about any of my courses using a special link that I give you, anyone who signs up through you, I give you 50% of the enrollment fee. So you get like us 50 bucks for every time that you share. Um, my shit with other people, which is amazing. And lots and lots of books, courses and software have that option where you can be an affiliate for them.
Leonie: (13:45)
You can also be a user tester with websites like analasia, startup lift and user testing. You don’t need any previous experience and user testing. They tell you exactly what to do. They just want ordinary people to test websites and see if it’s working for them. You could do tutoring with tutor finder. This is going to fucking take off like dogs nuts because guess what? We’ve just got 480 million more homeschoolers in the world. If you’re thinking of doing courses for students right now online. Whump whump whump! Now’s the opportunity. You can share a product that you love from Thermomix to doTERRA, essential oils to make up to clothes and build a network marketing business. And you can do this online. I built one online. I was the fastest person in the world to build to doTERRA’s highest rank, um, just by doing and sharing online.
Leonie: (14:35)
And here’s the thing, everyone’s going to be online looking for information now. You can do freelance jobs through smart crowd, click worker and Upwork. You can sell thrift store op shop finds on eBay. You can sell handmade arts and crafts on Etsy. You can also sell crop supplies on there. You can do online transcription at rev.com. You could use micro investing sites like acorns, fund rise and stash invest. You could teach ESL online through Q kids’ data, ABC, or teach away. You could manage social media for businesses. You could start a podcast and then and then either sell advertising on it or sell your own shit. You could license your photos on Stocksy, Getty, Shutterstock, or one, two, three RF. You could license your artwork through Shutterstock or Dreamstime. You could run a Kickstarter to fund a creative or entrepreneurial project. You could be a designer on non nine sides.
Leonie: (15:29)
You could sell art, print or digital downloads on deviant art. You could start a YouTube or a Twitch channel. You could do tasks on mechanical Turk, you could do email marketing with a niche newsletter, selling advertising, affiliate marketing or your own shit. You could write a book and self-published using Kindle direct publishing and you could tutor or mentor or create a course on things that you know. The possibilities really are endless and there is options aplenty. People are looking to transition, people are looking to be occupied, people are looking for their kids to be educated and the online space is wide open for that. And here’s the thing, coronavirus is also going to enforce us to do things like rest and be with ourselves and not like distract ourselves with the busy-ness of life anymore and that’s going to be challenging, but it’s also going to be a huge and marbles and incredible blessing.
Leonie: (16:28)
This is a time to learn and upgrade your skills. This is a time to create and bring in different projects that you wish you had time for. So an amazing time to save money. It’s an amazing time to read books. It’s a good time to grow some food, to be more local and to move towards self-sustainability. There are options galore. This enforced sabbatical is full of possibilities and it’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do with them. I know that this is challenging. I know that this time is full of anxiety, but try and look for the possibilities and stay focused in those possibilities and those opportunities. Our kids are watching us right now. They want to know how we deal with life in the face of adversity and uncertainty and they want to know that we trust in our own resilience, that we can be stoic.
Leonie: (17:25)
We’re of course we’re going to be absolutely human and we’re going to share with them what’s happening as well in a way that’s not going to freak them the fuck out and we’re going to adapt because that’s what we do. That is what humans do and we have a long, long history of adaptability, of stoicism, of being inventive in new ways. That’s how we’ve managed to survive all these motherfucking years as a human species and we can continue and adapt those traits as we face this new challenge. One of very many challenges that we have faced in short term and longterm and like going back aeons in history as well. All right, I’m sending you so much love, encourage each other and look for those beautiful possibilities all around you. There is a blank new canvas of life that is stretching before you and you get to choose how you’re going to be the artist of it. The end. Maybe share this with somebody who’s freaking the fuck out as well. All right, love you guys.
