Does passive income “work”?

There are great and heated debates about ‘passive’ income and many questions if “passive income” actually works. Is any income actually passive or do you have to graft to build wealth? Can you really have an asset that kicks out money without work? Can you have an asset that kicks out income once the work is done? Or is passive income just a scam sold by snake oil sales and marketing fly-by-nights?

I feel passionately that passive income does work and is possible, actually exists and you can have it too. I know this to be true, but voices like mine get drowned out by all the BS that’s out there in the form of schemes, scams and also all the poor people giving free advice and working 80 hours a week to make a few pounds an hour when all worked out. If you are working your arse off and you don’t have passive income, it means you are doing it wrong, not that it doesn’t exist. The easiest advice in the world is to say ‘work harder, longer, hustle and grind’, but that advice is basic, and not smart:

1. You have to work hard enough not to have to work hard & set to forget, while setting up
2. But as you do, you need to build systems, processes, software, automation & teams around you
3. You need to make yourself redundant not reliant (it is the ‘hard work’ myth that keeps people working on not in their enterprise)
4. You work hard to build assets, not earnings. Assets give you passive income. Systems manage assets
5. You still need to monitor assets, but that can also by systemised/outsourced
6. Your highest value (non) task is setting a clear vision & inspiring people around you to help you towards that vision (& that’s the easiest (non) hard work there is)

Slade make £500,000 each year with their xmas no.1
Paul Brown made $13million from the patent on the vale that holds upside down Ketchup
Lonnie Johnson got $73million in royalties in 5 years from Hasbro for the super soaker
Paulo Coelho has been earning on The Alchemist since 1988, getting his share of 65 million of sales ever since

In these examples, an asset was created, not an exchange of time for money. Books, property, information, IP, songs, movies. licenses, audios & DVDs, eCommerce platforms & sites, stocks, companies that you no longer work as an employee in, patents etc are all assets. If you stop spending and wasting your time working 80 hours a week and wearing it like a badge of honour and glory, and start investing your time, putting your time into building assets (and yes you work ‘hard’ at the start, but more importantly ‘smart’) then you get residual, ongoing return on your time in the form of passive income. Might you have to speak to your publisher every now and again, or send your invoices in, or even set up contracts; of course. Could you have a PA or MD that manages even those small (in terms of time) tasks? Yes.

There are 15 million millionaires in the world according to Forbes. That is 0.0214%. The problem is the 99.98% have a louder voice, which is why there’s so much free, poor advice about money out there. If you fall for a scheme or scam it shows a lack of vision and understanding of the value of money, assets and passive income at that time. Happy for your thoughts about passive income and to join the passive income debate below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob Moore
Co-Founder, Progressive Property
Property speech world record holder (motor mouth)
7 Times Best Selling Property Author
Proud Dad, average Golfer & slightly better Pilot
Author of Life Leverage, Money & “The Disruptive Entrepreneur” Podcast