If you’re coaching clients on a 1:1 basis, then you’re charging for your time, which is an example of “active income”.
With active income your earnings are directly tied to the amount of time you spend with each client.
If you have 8 clients a day, you’ll get paid 8 times; if you go on vacation and have zero clients a day, you’ll have no money coming in.
While this 1:1 premise can be profitable with high-end clients, you’ll still reach that glass ceiling because you only have so much time in a day to devote to clients.
So, if you want to break that glass ceiling and earn more while still coaching 1:1, it’s time to develop some passive income streams.
Here are My Top 3 Passive Income Ideas
Passive income is a way to leverage your 1:1 coaching by reaching more people at one time.
What’s the best way to do that? The choice is up to you; start off by choosing one passive income idea and when that is complete and you see sales, try creating a different stream of income.
Ideally, your passive income and active income are like gears in a clock, all working in perfect harmony to increase your profits and expand your name recognition.
1. Write a book.
Publishing a book gives you instant credibility with the world at large. Make it onto the Amazon Best Sellers list and you’ll go to the front of the line in superstardom.
Writing a book will open up doors to media interviews and speaking gigs, which in turn expose you to brand new, bigger audiences. Plus you’ll make those fans who can’t afford your 1:1 coaching extremely happy because they can still learn something from you in printed form.
2. Sell your recordings.
Whether you record webinars, podcast interviews, or organize a summit of business leaders, selling the recordings after the event is another way to earn passive income.
As always, there’s work to be done getting these webinars, interviews, and summits organized and running without a hitch, but offering a paid product for those who couldn’t attend live earns you some extra cash but also endears you to those fans who will still benefit from your brilliance.
3. Create a course…or a series.
Creating courses is a way to delve deeper into your expertise than a published book will allow. Consider this a passive way to coach clients in the comfort of their own homes but on a grander scale.
Just think…your fans can follow along in DIY fashion, with your words guiding them to their next steps, without you having to schedule each person into your already-busy calendar.
Plus your fans can work at their own pace instead of worrying about deadlines or having to attend webinars live. Give them what they want but allow them to work at their own pace.
Delegate some of the prep work to ghostwriters or a virtual assistant to make your part of the upfront work even more passive.
You’ll pay those contractors to organize and produce the finished product but consider that an investment in your business. Remember…you’ll have these finished products for years to come after this initial investment.
How Can Your Business Benefit From Passive Income
Have you heard the statistic that millionaires have at least seven income streams? That’s seven different ways that they’re making money each month.
Now take a look at your business; how many streams of income do you currently have? If it’s only one, then it’s time to open up that creative part of your brain and create more income streams.
Passive income is something of a misnomer. Work is still involved in creating products or setting up different forms of income but the difference is these streams of income can work for you almost on autopilot for years to come, long after the initial work is complete.
So think of the creative process as work-heavy in the beginning while you can still earn money from them well into the future.
Benefits of Passive Income
- Increase your bottom line profits.
This is the most obvious benefit but certainly worth mentioning because who doesn’t want to earn more profits? If you created a for-profit business, extra ways to earn income are always welcomed. As you well know, limiting your practice to 1:1 coaching can limit your income potential, making passive income streams even more important when your coaching calendar is filled to capacity.
2. Regain time in your day.
Hold up…I know I just said that creating products and other streams of income takes time but jump ahead and think about the back end of the process, when your product or income stream is completely set up and the upfront work is done. With a consistent, strong marketing plan, you can easily earn money on these passive income streams without much effort, even while you sleep, which means you can take off a little earlier or take an entire day off for fun because your passive income is still earning money.
3. Increase your credibility by helping more people.
Think of passive income as a way to share your expertise with an ever-expanding audience. A snowball at the top of a mountain is very small, which represents you with your inner circle of coaching clients. But as the snowball travels down the hill, it gathers more and more snow until it reaches mammoth size. The same is true of you as you reach out to more and more people, networking online and off, and providing guidance through your books, webinars, or courses. You’re leveraging your knowledge and showcasing your expertise to infinitely more people, which will lead to increased sales and an army of people who rave about your work. In this case, the snowball effect is a very good thing!
Planning Your Passive Income
Now that I’ve sold you on the benefits of having passive income streams, it’s time to plan out what those streams should be for your business. Traditionally, passive income often means affiliate marketing, writing a book, or creating courses based on your coaching specialty.
Of course, use your creativity to think of an idea that’s different from what other coaches produce that will also appeal to your ideal target market.
4 Myths about Passive Income
Creating multiple streams of passive income is a wise business decision but don’t be fooled by some of the myths around this topic. Do your research objectively and learn how to read between the lines of promises people make. This sage advice is often correct: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.
Myth #1: Creating passive income is quick and easy.
Anyone who has worked to create a product, write a book, create a niche website, or even promote affiliate links will tell you this myth is false. You’ll always have to do work at the beginning and the amount of work and how long it takes you will vary considerably depending on your income stream. Anyone promising you overnight riches is out of touch or trying to sell you a scam.
Myth #2: You can set it and forget it after your passive income stream is set up.
This is only true if you hire a project manager to manage the daily marketing and promotion plans for your chosen income stream. But even if you outsource the daily management, at some point you still need to evaluate if updates are needed or if it’s worth the ROI.
Myth #3: If you create it, it will sell.
This is a take on the famous line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” It worked well in the movie but in real life, you can’t just put up a sales page or publish a book on Amazon and wait for the sales to roll in. Organic search traffic is always nice but you’ll reap far greater profits if you actively market your products on social media, to your email lists, at live events, and with creative advertising campaigns. In the internet world with millions of products and websites, you have to work hard to make your products known. If you don’t toot your own horn, nobody will know what you have to offer.
Myth #4: You need large amounts of capital to create passive income.
Again, this depends on the type of income stream you choose to create but unless you want to start flipping houses, online income streams do not require huge amounts of capital. Take a look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. One of his business models which contributed to his earning over $5 million was to create niche websites. Today you can start a website with a very inexpensive domain purchase and an equally inexpensive web hosting package. Even if you want to self-publish a book on Amazon, you’ll invest more time in getting the manuscript ready than you will to actually publish.
One bonus tip: Try to focus on one income stream at a time until it becomes profitable. Once it makes you a consistent income and you have a process in place for managing it, start to research your next income stream.
Also remember that not every idea will be a grand slam. If an income stream isn’t performing as you had hoped, go back to the drawing board or retire that idea and move on to the next.
Yes, You CAN Teach the World What You Know!
3 Tips for Creating a Positive Mindset
What’s holding you back from creating a course or two that can greatly benefit your ideal client: Fear of failure? Fear of success? Fear of looking like an imposter? Feeling like you’re not expert enough?
Believe it or not, most entrepreneurs struggle with mindset roadblocks at some point. Even more experienced business owners can struggle with a roadblock or insecurities. I’ve met plenty of entrepreneurs who label themselves as introverted and I shake my head in shock because that’s not the image they portray online; that’s the ultimate “fake it til you make it” thinking.
Lifting mental roadblocks can be done with some daily habits and positive self-talk. Here are three tips you can implement right now in your daily life to create a positive mindset:
1. Start your day with positive affirmations.
A quick Google search will give you thousands of affirmations to choose from but you just need to start with a couple of affirmations that resonate with you. Post them anywhere in your home that you’ll see them often. Say one or more as you shower or find 5 minutes of quiet time in the morning to say affirmations or to enjoy a short, guided meditation. If you get stressed during the day, walk away from your desk and start repeating your affirmations. The more you repeat your affirmations, the more your brain will believe them to be true.
2. Surround yourself with positive, authentic people.
You don’t need a bunch of fake friends telling you how great you are; instead, find business peers, coaches, or other friends who genuinely try to lift people up and make the world a better place. Their positivity will rub off on you and sometimes all you need is a quick 5-minute phone call to one of these positive people to lift your funk.
3. Connect with your tribe; they are the ones who WANT to hear from you.
We are all experts at something, even if we are self-taught don’t have an official degree. A lot can be learned from our life experiences and that translates into expertise. Even if you feel like you can learn more about your chosen specialty, you still know a lot more than your tribe, and they follow YOU because of your style and authenticity. Are there other experts in the online world in your chosen field? For sure, but don’t let their celebrity, status, or number of social media followers intimidate you. Share your message far and wide and your tribe will find you.
While you’re testing out these tips, start a brainstorm list of course ideas. You don’t need to know the formats or the specifics of how to create a course just yet; simply jot down ideas that would help your ideal audience. Somewhere in there is a course just begging to be created, some topic that your audience desperately needs to understand. Keep that list growing until you feel inspired to create your course.
Your Next Step – Create that Course!
When inspiration strikes, don’t let that course idea simple fester in your mind. It’s time to create that course and tell your audience about it.
How to Build a Passive Income Empire by Hiring a Dream Team
Building your business to have a diverse set of income streams is a wise move. Plus, if you hire a team of contractors to handle the production, your passive income truly becomes much more passive once you get your team started.
Think of it this way: If you invest in the stock market, every financial advisor suggests splitting up your investments into a diverse array of stocks and bonds, simply for the fact that not every company will perform well all the time. When one company has a bad quarter, a diverse portfolio allows you to minimize your losses, especially if the other companies in your portfolio are doing well.
Independent contractors are also advised to work for an array of clients instead of devoting all their time to just one client, simply because you never know when that one client will close up shop or decide to hire a different contractor. The same is true for your own business. What if you lost multiple clients in one month? Do you have a calm way to make up that income or would you be scrambling in a panic? Creating passive income over time lessens the panic.
How a Dream Team Benefits Your Business
Working with independent contractors allows you to focus on your daily money-making tasks while your products, classes, books, summits or webinars are being produced in the background. While these products will certainly be money-makers, delegating the creation to a team makes them even more passive so you can focus on your coaching clients and marketing.
In general, your dream team will consist of a graphic designer, a ghostwriter, and a virtual assistant, although your team will look different from other coaches based upon what type of products you’re creating. If you need to grow your team, hire a project manager to oversee deadlines and to answer questions from your contractors. Again, this allows you to focus on your daily tasks.
To make the most of your team investment, decide if you need all these players on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. This frequency will depend highly on the types of products on your brainstorm list and how quickly you want to produce them. Just keep in mind that contractors take work all throughout the year so there’s no guarantee that your favorite ghostwriter will be available in 11 months to work on your next project.
One of the most frequent questions or complaints about hiring a team is that it costs more money. Very true, but consider this an upfront investment in your business. You’re paying your team one sum per project but you can then sell that same product for years to come, with no changes. If you price your product carefully and do the research to know this is what your audience wants, you will likely make your initial investment back very quickly; then the rest of your earnings are pure profit.
One last tip: Advise your dream team to document their processes during the creation period or assign this task to your project manager. This way there’s less of a learning curve if you have to hire a new team member in the future because they can refer back to these process notes.