Pretend you just asked me “Will you help me create passive income?”
Here’s what you’d hear me say:
I want to help you create a business that allows you to work in the ways you’re meant to work and get paid really well for it.
I also don’t want you to work more than you want to work.
(I work less than 25 hours a week myself. Often less.)
And YET...
Passive income is often not a great central goal because:
Passive income takes a long time.
It takes so much time and love and effort to get to passive income that if that’s your primary goal, I’m concerned that you won’t have the patience to get there. If years of serving directly in new and innovative ways doesn’t appeal to you, it will be HARD to turn your rebel business into something passive.
Passive income requires a really huge audience.
If you want passive income, you will need to throw yourself into audience building in a big way. (Unless you already have an audience of tens of thousands right now. If that’s the case, ignore this email. You’re already on your path to passive income if that’s what brings you joy.)
Wanting to go passive is sometimes a sign that you’re burnt out.
You may be working WAY too much and resting WAAAAY too little. You may be working in ways that don’t feel good to your body or spirt. That’s not a great place to be when you start or expand a business. If you're burnt out, it’s time to clear some space to REST and HEAL before starting a new project.
The biggest value to our participants often comes from interactive work.
When I ask people to think about the programs and services they’ve purchased and participated in, and notice which ones brought the biggest transformation, they often talk about interaction with the leader and/or community as an important component in the most valuable programs.
Passive comes after highly interactive iterations.
Even when a passive program is highly effective, as soon as we look into its history, we find out it was run live at least a few times before it went passive.
So perhaps you'd like to ask: CAN a program be made passive successfully?
Let’s look at a successful example. I’m taking a self-paced course right now that was taught live in its first iterations. When she ran it live, the instructor took note of what questions the participants asked and the feedback they shared. She and her team have built all of that into the videos, worksheets and quizzes that I now get to enjoy.
Now I can take this course in a self-paced way because others came before me to help shape the experience.
But it’s still not passive.
She’s running three office hours calls every week.
She and her team are making improvements and updates to the curriculum constantly.
In case you’re curious, I’m talking about Paula Pant’s course about buying your first rental property. I highly recommend if that’s something you want to learn about. I’m not an affiliate, just giving credit where credit is due.
Watching Paula geek out about assessing a potential rental property is delightful because she has energy for it.
I have no doubt that Paula is making a GREAT living from this course, but if she didn’t love talking about rental properties, she’d be very unhappy and burnt out.
I use that example of a “passive” program to say yes, it can be done well. And it’s really not passive.
If you’re interested in creating an expanded business beyond a traditional private practice, please ask yourself what transformation you have energy for. What’s your “positive obsession”? (as Octavia E. Butler would say).
Follow that energy. That’s where you’ll create the program or service only you can create. You probably won’t be impatient to make it passive. You'll want to make it excellent.
Rather than listening to the tired, burnt out voice that says “I want passive income,” listen for the voice that says “Here’s what I want to devote myself to!”
From that energy, you’ll be able to build an empire if you like.