Teaching people how to play poker online and making money doing it! A membership business is a terrific way to make money and be successfully unemployed.
Learn from Sky Matsuhashi of Smart Poker Study as he shows us how he started an online membership to make money.
How Sky Makes Money Without Having a Job
Sky was fired from his job in 2015.
In 2013, he started Smart Poker Study on the side, and when he got fired, his first reaction was that he had to do his business full time.
Up until that time, he didn’t know if he wanted to do a podcast.
He didn’t want the pressure of finding another full time job in an office or in a restaurant, so he started working more on his online business.
There are three main ways Sky makes money from his online business.
- First is through a monthly membership
- Second way is by creating physical products like books, or electronic products like courses and webinars and selling them through his website and Amazon
- Third way is through coaching.
The Process of Taking a Part-Time Side Business Full Time
Sky was working on his website one or two hours a day.
After he got fired, he knew he had to start creating products, whether it was free, like articles, or available to purchase, like courses.
This took a little bit of thought and brainstorming.
How Sky’s Students Make Money Playing Poker
Sky isn’t just giving his students strategies, he is teaching them how to study and how to learn from their mistakes.
If you want to get good at it, you need to do the training away from the game.
Sky teaches this through his podcast and training videos.
Listen to the Podcast Episode
If you watch any sort of poker content, the poker coach is telling you the basic strategies and the good things you should do.
They don’t tell you what exactly to practice per day, or to study a certain thing, or to use certain filters in the database. This is what Sky does.
He realized the poker market was lacking that type of teaching.
Watch the full interview here:
How a Monthly Membership Works
Building a monthly membership all starts with building an audience. Sky does this by providing free content through his website, podcast, and YouTube.
The free content helps people understand what they can learn from him.
A membership is later in your entrepreneurial journey, because you first have to get people to listen to you, follow you, and believe in you.
After that, you can create products and eventually a membership.
How to Quit Your Job with Passive Income
Get the Best Selling Book FREE!
Sky thinks of each month in the membership as a workshop, which is based on a set of strategies on a specific topic. In December 2019, the theme for the month was “Finding the Fold”.
One of the biggest weaknesses is when a person cannot fold during a game, because they think their opponent is bluffing. When players can’t find a fold, they give chips to their opponents.
With the membership, every Thursday a different strategy video is released.
Every Monday, there is a quiz and a review or take action video.
Growing Your Audience and Membership
Every week on the podcast, Sky promotes the membership and he promotes what is new in the membership to subscribers in his weekly newsletter.
Within the podcast, if he is talking about a specific strategy, he may answer a specific question from his Poker Forge Facebook group.
On Sky’s website, he has a sales page which includes a welcome video and sample videos.
Sky’s Process for Writing Books
When Sky has an idea for a book, he outlines it chapter by chapter. Then, he does a podcast episode on parts of each chapter.
It is a way to gradually write the book, because he releases a new episode on the podcast each week.
Within six months, the book is written, because he turns his podcast into a book.
Sky has written three books and he is working on the fourth.
His membership website, thepokerforge.com, sponsors his podcast, which provides more exposure.
Sky is Currently Trying to Figure Out How to Scale His Business.
Sky doesn’t do Facebook ads, but he is learning SEO and how to make his website better so it is more searchable in Google.
It is a fine balance of providing content and building and growing the business.
Eventually, Sky may need to hire out some of the easier things so he can focus on growing his business.
The Five-Year Plan
In five years, Sky expects that he will still be doing his podcast. He would like his membership to be five times bigger, and he would like to be writing his eighth book.
He expects to continue providing free training videos and continue doing coaching.
At this point, he is not looking to hire a virtual assistant. Once he finishes writing his book, he is going to dive further into SEO.
Sky loves paintball. It would be great to have something online just talking about paintball, showing paintball strategies, selling products through affiliate links, etc.
However, there is no way he will be jumping into this within the next two years, because he has so many ideas for his business, including books, webinars, and courses.
Sky has mapped out the next 30 months of workshops. When you love something, you never run out of ideas.
PRO TIP: Start another website and publish one article a month.
After a couple of years you will have close to 30 articles with little effort. This is a great way to get more streams of income.
What Sky is Doing to Make Things Better For Others
Sky is doing a really good job raising his kids, paying his taxes, and picking up his dog’s poop.
The Advice Sky Would Give to Anyone Who Wanted to Get Started Playing Online Poker
Beyond the basics of opening an account and depositing money on one of the poker sites, the first thing you need to do is be aware of the hands you choose to play.
There is a huge difference between choosing Jack, Seven suits and King, Jack or Ace, Jack suits. Make better hand choices.
Second, always strive to play in position.
This means you get to act after your opponents.
This way, you get to see them bet and you get to see them look at their cards before you need to act.
The Advice Sky Would Give to His Younger Self
If it was 1992, Sky would tell himself the internet is coming and it is going to be a big boom and will change society. You need to learn from the beginning how to make money on it.
Always be on the lookout for changes.
The Tools Sky Uses in His Business
Habitica. It is a way to gamify your life.
You create your own avatar, and every task you check off you get some experience, gold, and manna and you can use this to defeat enemies, purchase animals and tools, or level up.
The Non-Fiction Book Sky Recommends
The One Thing, by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
Find Sky Online:
Website: smartpokerstudy.com
Podcasts: Smart Poker Study, Daily Poker Tips
Membership: thepokerforge.com
Social Media: @smartpokerstudy