A Blog About Money
For the next 3.8 min, I want to talk about money.
I realize this topic is a little different than usual and could even be perceived as pompous or insensitive. That’s not why I’m writing it.
Stick with me through the end, and I guarantee you’ll look at forms of income differently.
How We Earn Money
The vast majority of people — myself included — earn a living by trading their time for money.
A few examples… Minimum wage is derived from hourly pay. The salary at your corporate job is calculated based on some number of hours per week you’re at their beck and call. Flight attendants get paid from the second the boarding door closes to the second it reopens.
Time. It’s all time. Tick tock.
Most people go through life counting down the hours without ever considering another option.
It turns out, truly achieving the “freedom” we all desire is contingent upon embracing the alternative, the “other option” that lies beyond hourly pay.
Separating Time From Money
We must separate time from money.
Creating this separation is the holy grail, the mack daddy, the big kahuna of financial freedom.
This alternative form of income I’m referring to is often called passive income, and it’s all around us. We just don’t pay attention.
Real estate: The money you pay your landlord each month? Passive income. He/she didn’t do anything to earn that money besides calling a maintenance person to fix your AC (or in the case of my landlord, not even bothering to do that).
Online classes: In the past year, Facebook has become overridden with people selling “online classes” — marketing classes, classes to get 60 sec. abs, consulting classes, the list goes on and on. These pitches are nothing more than passive income schemes. The salesperson builds a library of videos and just cashes checks as people continuously sign up to watch them.
E-Commerce: Once you put in the time and effort to identify a product to sell online, the upside becomes passive income. 1 person or 100,000 people could by your widget in a given afternoon, and that revenue is not directly tied to the hours you spent in a shop selling said widget.
What’s the Catch?
Before you start saying, “Don’t you have to have a lot of money to even consider generating passive income?” The answer is no, you don’t.
You can theoretically create a digital poster using your local library’s computer, upload it to Etsy, and charge people to download it for years to come.
Granted, what I’m talking about often takes a lot more work than I’m implying, but it is by no means out of reach. The first step is recognizing that passive income is an option. The second step is taking action to capture it for yourself.
The next level of my business is contingent on generating passive income. I think you should be thinking along the same lines.
See you next Sunday at 8:30pm. 🙂
