I’ve been a bit unorthodox in how I’ve gotten to green belt in that I’ve got four separate clusters, and they are fairly disparate. A cluster is a combination of message, market and mode.

The four clusters that have contributed to my green belt are:

Love Your Business - Business coaching micro and small business leaders in growing their businesses
Inventium - Training corporates in innovation and idea generation
Financial Independence Company - training and mentoring gen-x’ers in mastering personal finance and becoming financially independent sooner
Pure Bookkeeping - Speaking to bookkeepers and from the stage selling them a system to grow their business

The more conventional approach is to have a stronger link between the different clusters so that it's easier to cross-sell between them. Green belt would usually also come from three clusters rather than four. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll unpack each of my clusters and let you know what’s worked to generate revenue in each.

And obviously these were all already underway when I started my white belt to black belt challenge. I’ve been going hard to commercialise stuff that I’ve already developed - my challenge hasn’t been coming up with new content, but making money from the thinking I’ve already done and from the IP I’ve already developed. And while I wouldn’t recommend spending 9 years at white belt like I’ve done, one of the definite advantages is it gives you a lot of time to develop and refine your IP.

If you are developing the content along the way it will clearly take longer to progress through the belts.

I’d love to hear what your different clusters are, you can leave them below.