672: 4 Types of Passive Income to Stop Trading Time for Money

Summary

Detailed Summary of The Side Hustle Show Episode 672: “4 Types of Passive Income to Stop Trading Time for Money”

In Episode 672 of "The Side Hustle Show," host Nick Loper explores four distinct types of passive income, offering listeners comprehensive strategies to generate revenue streams that don’t require continuous time investment. Drawing upon insights from previous episodes and featuring guest experts, this episode serves as a practical guide for aspiring side hustlers aiming to achieve financial independence.

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1. Buying Cash-Flowing Assets

Overview: The first type of passive income discussed is purchasing cash-flowing assets. This approach, often termed the "make money with money" strategy, involves investing in assets that generate consistent income, such as real estate, dividend stocks, business lending, and more.

Real Estate Investment with Dustin Heiner: Nick introduces Dustin Heiner's expertise from Episode 387, where Dustin delves into the intricacies of rental real estate.

• Dustin Heiner [01:03]:

  "You want to buy for $250 or more in passive income after every single expense that goes into your pocket."

Dustin emphasizes the importance of thorough research and building a robust team to manage properties efficiently. He shares his success of managing over 30 properties with minimal personal involvement by delegating tasks to property managers and other key team members.

• Nick Loper [03:16]:

  "So this is you're talking about like the team being the property management, the realtor, perhaps the handyman to come out and fix stuff when it breaks. Like, is that what you mean?"

• Dustin Heiner [03:26]:

  "Your number one person is your quarterback and that is your property manager."

Vending Machines as Cash-Flowing Assets: Another example is vending machines, highlighted through insights from Mike Hoffman in Episode 599.

• Mike Hoffman [07:03]:

  "I financed them with zero money down, and I typically have them paid off in the first year just with profits."

Nick and Mike discuss the financial mechanics, emphasizing the low-risk nature and scalability of vending machines. With strategic placement and efficient management, vending machines can generate substantial monthly profits with minimal oversight.

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2. Building Cash-Flowing Assets (Sweat Equity)

Overview: The second category involves creating and nurturing assets that generate income through initial effort and ongoing maintenance. This "sweat equity" approach includes digital products, online courses, YouTube channels, self-publishing, and more.

Digital Products and Printables with Cody Berman: Nick references Episode 665, featuring Cody Berman, who discusses leveraging low-competition niches on platforms like Etsy.

• Cody Berman [14:50]:

  "There's 50 people searching for this a month and there's zero competition. And I can scoop up say even 20% of them."

Cody illustrates how even products with modest demand can cumulatively generate significant income by targeting multiple niches.

YouTube Content Creation with Tyler Christensen: From Episode 656, Tyler Christensen shares his journey in creating YouTube content for passive income.

• Tyler Christensen [23:08]:

  "Consistency is key... It's a numbers game."

He explains how persistent content creation leads to organic growth and occasional viral success, resulting in continual passive revenue from older videos.

Online Courses with Jac Hopkins: Jac Hopkins discusses his strategy in Episode 571 for selling online courses with minimal ongoing effort.

• Jac Hopkins [26:16]:

  "I have two tiers, one's $500, one's $1,000. But inside that limited time window of the funnel, you can get in for basically 20% off."

Jac emphasizes the effectiveness of evergreen funnels that automate sales processes, allowing courses to generate income over extended periods without constant updates.

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3. Renting or Selling Access to Assets You Own

Overview: The third type focuses on monetizing assets you already own by renting them out or selling access. This can include physical items like RVs, mobility scooters, dresses, or spaces like extra rooms and pools.

RV Rentals with Dustin Heiner: Dustin shares his experience renting out an RV immediately after purchase.

• Dustin Heiner [33:20]:

  "People are, hey, I need it for this weekend because that was in July when I purchased it."

This quick turnaround demonstrates the high demand and profitability potential of renting out high-value assets.

Mobility Scooter Rentals with Lenny Tim: From Episode 564, Lenny Tim discusses his mobility scooter rental business.

• Lenny Tim [34:54]:

  "I didn't buy the first one until I had a critical mass of inbound inquiries wanting to rent from me."

Lenny highlights the importance of validating demand before investing in equipment, ensuring profitability from the outset.

Dress Rentals with Summer Fisher: Summer Fisher elaborates on renting dresses in Episode 652, emphasizing creative financing and consignment models.

• Summer Fisher [38:28]:

  "You can work on a consignment model or use return policies to minimize risk."

She provides strategies to start dress rental businesses with minimal upfront costs, leveraging existing inventory and flexible return policies.

Additional Examples: Other assets discussed include mobility scooters, photo booths, portable hot tubs, and even unconventional items like dresses and moving boxes. Guests like Gar Russell and Lenny Tim demonstrate how different assets can be effectively monetized through strategic rental models.

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4. Reverse Passive Income: Cutting Ongoing Expenses

Overview: The fourth category, termed "reverse passive income," involves reducing or eliminating recurring expenses to improve overall financial health. This approach emphasizes saving money as a form of passive income.

Strategies for Cost Reduction:

• Substitution Game: Nick explains how substituting current services with cheaper alternatives can lead to significant savings.

  • Nick Loper [24:54]:

    "Switching from Verizon to Ting to Mint Mobile... added thousands of dollars in reverse passive income."

• Operation Tool Swap: Optimizing business expenses by replacing costly tools with more affordable options.

  • Nick Loper [36:17]:

    "We were able to drop down to that without any impact to the business and save some money every month."

• Personal Expense Management: Implementing strategies like 30-day waiting periods before major purchases and leveraging cashback offers.

  • Jenna Smith [46:05]:

    "How can I get it for free? How can I get it for low cost?"

• Bank and Credit Card Bonuses: Utilizing sign-up bonuses and cashback rewards to enhance savings.

  • Nick Loper [46:40]:

    "New credit card sign-up offers usually range from $200 to $1,000 in value."

Guest Insights:

• Jenna Smith [46:05]: Provides a four-question framework to evaluate purchases, enhancing the effectiveness of cost-cutting strategies.

• Dylan (from Episode 663): Shares his success in accruing substantial bonuses through strategic bank account setups.

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Conclusion and Recap

Nick Loper concludes the episode by summarizing the four types of passive income:

1. Buy Cash-Flowing Assets: Invest in real estate, vending machines, small businesses, or dividend stocks to generate steady income.
2. Build Cash-Flowing Assets: Create digital products, online courses, YouTube channels, or self-published books that continue to earn over time.
3. Rent or Sell Access to Assets You Own: Monetize existing assets such as RVs, mobility scooters, dresses, or even property spaces by renting them out.
4. Reverse Passive Income: Reduce recurring expenses through smarter spending, leveraging discounts, and optimizing current expenditures.

Nick emphasizes the importance of starting small with attainable goals, allowing passive income streams to grow organically over time. He encourages listeners to take proactive steps toward building multiple income streams, reinforcing the message with inspiring anecdotes from past guests.

Final Notable Quotes:

• Hannah Ingram [14:58]:

  "If you don't find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die."

• Mike Hoffman [07:49]:

  "I financed them with zero money down, and I typically have them paid off in the first year just with profits."

• Cody Berman [14:50]:

  "There's 50 people searching for this a month and there's zero competition."

• Tyler Christensen [23:08]:

  "Consistency is key... It's a numbers game."

These quotes encapsulate the essence of building scalable and reliable passive income streams, highlighting both the mindset and practical strategies required for success.

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Final Thoughts:

Episode 672 of "The Side Hustle Show" provides a thorough exploration of diverse passive income strategies, blending theoretical insights with practical examples. By categorizing passive income into four types, Nick Loper offers listeners a clear roadmap to financial independence, supported by actionable advice and inspiring success stories from industry experts.

Transcript

[Nick Loper]

Everybody wants passive income, that's the dream. But how you go about getting it is the hard part. And which path you choose depends on your starting point, your interests, your long term goals, all that stuff. Now we've covered a ton of passive income ideas on the show, or maybe more accurately, time leveraged income ideas, ways to make money without directly trading your time. But today I'm grouping those into four different categories. Four different types of, of passive income that you can start making so you can see which might make the most sense for you. The first is to buy cash flowing assets. This is the make money with money option. And under this category of cash flowing assets you'll find options like dividend investing, business lending, real estate and stuff like that. Which is great if you already have money to invest. Rental real estate is probably the classic example of this and might be statistically one of the most common side hustles in the world. Buy a house, rent it out, pocket the cash flow. Here's how Dustin Heiner explained it in episode 387.

[Dustin Heiner]

The way to start is to, number one, find which state you're going to invest in and then zoom into which city you're going to invest in. And the way you do that is I usually use Zillow. Zillow is a great site to get big broad picture. Actually it's a start. As we look through that, it's a tool for us to do more due diligence. And that's basically just making sure we're making the right investment. But you looking at the entire state, look for population areas that have a lot more properties than not. And you zoom into that city and you get even closer and closer and you're going to look at all the different properties in that specific city to see if they meet your criteria, how much money you have to invest, the type of properties that you want and how much rent it's going to make. So you're making, and here's, here's a principle for everybody listening. You want to buy for $250 or more in passive income after every single expense that goes into your pocket. Because that's how I provide for my family. I have 30 plus properties now. And so we literally live off of our real estate. The next thing we need to do is build the business, finding the right people to actually run the business for us without us doing any work. Because with all my properties, I literally only work 30 minutes a month. 30 minutes a month for every single one of my properties. And other people do the work because I Built the business. Now let me give you an example of what building the business looks like. If you're going to start a convenience store, you're not going to just get a location, open door, put a box of chocolate candy bars in the center and hope to run a business. That's essentially what you're doing. If you just buy a property anywhere without building the business. No, you're not going to do that. You're going to get the gondolas, which are the shelving units. You're going to get the countertops, you're going to get the fountain machines, the cold storage, the cash registers, bank accounts, employees. You're going to build the entire infrastructure before you put one piece of inventory into that business. And when you're doing that, you now have a solid business. Every piece of property with my 30 plus properties now, I literally view them as inventory. It's not a home for me to live in, it's a piece of inventory, just like a candy bar. So once I have the business built, every new property is like another box of candy bars inside my business. And I could just keep adding and adding and adding into that business. Does that make sense?

[Nick Loper]

Sure. So this is you're talking about like the team being the property management, the realtor, perhaps the handy person to come out and fix stuff when it breaks. Like, is that what you mean?

[Dustin Heiner]

Your number one person is your quarterback and that is your property manager.

[Nick Loper]

So you.

[Dustin Heiner]

What I suggest is I literally have all my students interview six different property managers because you're going to make sure that this is the number one person you're going to work with. There's so much to talk about which we can't go into that right now. But your other people you're going to get are many wide receivers or running backs, if you know a football analogy. So these are the people that are going to be making plays for you. And these are realtors, these are wholesalers. Wholesalers are basically like realtors, but they're not licensed. They find sellers and they find buyers and put them together. You're going to find other investors that are willing to sell. You're going to find other ways to find properties, seller financing and all that sort of stuff. You're going to get somebody on your team that's going to be doing your insurance. You're going to get somebody that's on your team that's going to be doing your finances. You're not just finances, but funding. Get. Make sure you get mortgages and things like that. Right? And even handymen. Contractors, roofers, plumbers, you're going to get all this stuff developed and know that you will absolutely have a business built before you buy that property. Because I'll give you an example of a big reason why I never fly anymore is I flew to Illinois, I went to Springfield, Illinois, a great town, great place, but I literally could not find a good property manager. And I thought, man, I flew all the way out here and I can't find a property manager. I can't buy a property because nobody's going to manage it. Or at least I could not find somebody all this time and everything was wasted. So now I literally do everything remotely, through the phone, through Internet and all that sort of stuff. And I found there's no need to actually fly to another city ever again to even start a brand new place. And especially all my students have literally done that as well. So yes, building the business is getting your team, getting the infrastructure of your business so that it runs for you automatically and makes you money every single month.

[Nick Loper]

Now, having that team in place is what it allows real estate to be a passive income stream for Dustin, because there are many a burnt out landlord who will tell you that it's anything but if you don't have that infrastructure in place. Now, now the most powerful thing that Dustin said in that interview actually came at the very end of the call and it was him describing getting laid off from his government job, the job he thought was super secure. And in that moment, the identity shift of becoming an investor first, a real estate investor first and an employee second. Because he did, you know, he went and found another job and he might have only had one or two properties at that point, but he saw the way out and he said, look, it took another 10 years to build the portfolio, to build up that cash flow. But it started from that really low point of getting laid off and shifting the mindset. My day job is now my side hustle was kind of how he phrased it. So that is episode 387 in your archives if you want to go back and check that out. Another popular side hustle I would put in this category of buying cash flowing assets would be vending machines. So you're going to pay upfront for the machine, for the inventory, but then they can make sales 247 without having you around. If you find a good location, they could easily generate $500 plus per month in profit. Then it's a matter of stacking those up, stacking locations, adding more machines and building that route to get to your income goal. The other cool thing about the vending business is it's pretty low risk. If one location isn't working, it's portable. You pack up that machine and try someplace else. Here's part of my chat with Mike hoffman from episode 599 on how he got started as a vendingpreneur. So you get your first yes from this apartment building, this athlete or student apartment building, and then you start looking around. Well, how am I going to get a machine? Walk me through what happens after that.

[Mike Hoffman]

I literally googled vending machines. You kind of got two routes here. You got the. You go down the used path. Look on places like Marketplace and Craigslist, and even local refurbished type places like appliance type places. And then you got these new places. And the best analogy I would use as a new vending machine manufacturer is very similar to a car dealership. So I called them up. They're like, all right, Mike, the machine you want, it's going to be about $5,500. Do you want to pay for it up front, or do you want to finance it with zero money down? And I was like, okay, tell me about your financing options. We're like, oh, we can do it over 60 months. You can use profits to pay them off early. And every single one now, I financed with zero money down, and I typically have them paid off in the first year just with profits.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. And that's like the real estate mindset of leveraging other people's capital versus, you know, coming up with a hundred percent down payment.

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah. And this is back to the, like, when I bought that a hundred grand house, I had to put 20% down, and that just wasn't sustainable. Every single rental. So this is where, with vending, I just bought 18 grand worth of vending machines, I think, in October, and I didn't put a dollar down.

[Nick Loper]

And the benefit there is that you got something brand new, because I'm. I'm on Facebook. Marketplace, of course. Like, well, shoot, what's available?

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah.

[Nick Loper]

From the 500 to 1000 dol range, it looks like, for some drink machines. Okay. A little bit more than that for, like, the combo machines or the snack machines. I don't know how old they are. I don't know if they have card readers. But there's options if you want to minimize the upfront sticker price of these things too.

[Mike Hoffman]

There's definitely options. I got my first machine used, and then it broke after six months. And I was like, I never want to do that again. I don't Want to be a machine mechanic? None of that stuff. I just want this thing running.

[Nick Loper]

Are they like relatively reliable? To what extent do you have to know the fixing game or do you have a go to vending machine fixer person that you can call like if something does break?

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah, that's why. So ever since that first one I got off craigslist broke, I've only bought new ever since. And so they're under warranty. So if anything were to ever, I mean, you got to keep in mind these things have been around for decades, so they're built to last. I mean we're talking 20 years plus. So they constantly are built to be robust and to be used. So if I ever have an issue because mine are under warranty, I just FaceTime them. When I'm at the machine, they do their little troubleshooting thing. If there's any issues, they just overnight me apart. And like I said, I don't want to be the mechanic.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that becomes a little bit less passive at that point.

[Mike Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

So walk me through the math here. So, new machine, 5500. You're financing that over a period of several years. What's typical payment?

[Mike Hoffman]

Typical payment is right now with interest rates are around 170 bucks a month. Your first payment isn't due until 90 days after it's installed on site. So you're going to do 90 days of revenue before your first one $70 payments due and then it's $170 a month typically. And that's just based on today's rates of let's just say 8 to 9%. I don't know. I have one.

[Nick Loper]

Sure, sure.

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah. Four years ago that my payments are $112. So there's definitely a little variable there. And then, yeah, you can just use profits to pay those off of those machines. I just used as an example that are 170bu. I mean, we had one in January that just did over $1,500.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. $15 of revenue minus your cost of product. Aim for a, what, like a 3x markup, like stuff and vending machines. It's not cheap.

[Mike Hoffman]

Exactly.

[Nick Loper]

You pay for the convenience.

[Mike Hoffman]

Yep, yep. So typically we'll be around 35, 40%. So let's just shoot high on expenses. Let's say 40% of 1500 bucks. So what's that, 650, $700 in cost of goods.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so we'll call it 800 in profit on that $1500 month. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Minus your one hundred and seventy in payment. And you're still in the black pretty healthily and you pay it off faster. If you don't like paying interest and you parlay that into the next machine next location. Okay, you're starting to try to see how this can work out and you have so far minimized your overhead. Definitely recommend checking out that full episode if you missed it. Number 599 in your feed, Mike breaks down his criteria on what makes a good location for him in terms of residential building population, number of units, or office building occupancy. Yes, you got to restock the machines, but that just means you're making sales. Also under this category of buying cash flowing assets would be stuff like short term real estate backed loans like on ground floor. It could be dividend investing. Like for years I was focused on building up my truly passive dividend and interest cash flow, setting new monthly milestone targets. Could I get it to $1,000 a month? Could I get it to $1,500? $2,000? Very passive. Maybe not the most exciting ROI in the world. You can sometimes generate better returns by looking for businesses for sale nearby. After all, that's what dividends are, right? It's a portion of the company's profits paid out to shareholders. I've got a fun example of someone doing just that coming up right after this. One strategy I didn't fully embrace or maybe wasn't fully aware of when I was starting out was this idea of the piggyback principle. In the startup phase. That means you don't have to start completely from scratch, but instead you can take advantage of existing tools, templates, playbooks, best practices from the people who've gone before you. A perfect example of this is our partner, Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, from household names to to side hustlers on their way to becoming household names. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store and start selling. Plus, Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools to accelerate your workflow. We're talking product descriptions, page headlines and even enhancing your product photography. You can even easily create email and social media campaigns to reach your target customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com sidehustle Go to shopify.com sidehustlez shopify.com sidehustole Remember data from the Goonies? The guy with all the gadgets or data from Star Trek. I think that's why I say data instead. And one thing I love about our sponsor Mint Mobile is, is I can get all the data I need for one low monthly price. That's right down here. It's our time. Mint Mobile is rescuing people from overpriced wireless and they're jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. All Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data or data I guess your choice. And unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your own phone number along with all your existing contacts. Join me in ditching overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint mobile for just 15 bucks a month. No matter how you say it, don't overpay for it. Shop data [e-mail] Sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. We're back and we're talking the four types of passive income and which flavor might make the most sense for you in your financial journey. The first type is buying cash flowing assets which is historically the it takes money to make money option. But with a little creativity and finding the right opportunity, you might be able to buy some cash flow with little or no money down in the form of a local small business. Here's Hannah ingram from episode 570.

[Hannah Ingram]

I read this quote by Warren Buffett that said if you don't find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die. That really just like hit me like a ton of Ricks right there.

[Nick Loper]

I was like, it hits you, right?

[Hannah Ingram]

Yeah, I was like what can I do that actually makes passive income?

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. And for most people that's like the traditional retirement path. Like I'm going to build up this huge nest egg and you know, eventually going to live off the dividends, interest appreciation or it's rental properties that I can build off that cash flow or I could build a business that spins off cash flow. But it absolutely hits you. You're like well shoot, I'd rather not wait or I'd rather not work until I die. I'd like to have some optionality here.

[Hannah Ingram]

Exactly. That was my whole thought press and not think really long term. So I Was like, man, I am not gonna work until I die. Like, I'm gonna be retired by the time I'm 30, you know? So I was like, okay. I sat down. I was like, what businesses are actually making money? You know, if I'm at the gym, if I'm hanging out with friends, if I'm out selling real estate, showing a house or whatever. And when I was like, okay, car washes, Laundromats, storage unit facilities. So, like, those were like the three that I really went hard and put a focus on trying to acquire.

[Nick Loper]

Where were you shopping?

[Hannah Ingram]

I was looking around, like on LoopNet.com, crexy.com I was doing Driving for Dollars, kind of like the whole wholesaling method, but with businesses and just scouring the Internet.

[Nick Loper]

Can I pause you? What do you mean by Driving for Dollars?

[Hannah Ingram]

So Driving for Dollars, I was like driving around looking for kind of like ran down businesses. And I would slide a note under the door.

[Nick Loper]

Okay.

[Hannah Ingram]

You know, with my number on it, asking if they're interested.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah. If they're like, the building is still there, but they're not, it doesn't appear that they're operational.

[Hannah Ingram]

That or it looks really ran down. Because I'm trying to find a motivated seller. So I'm trying to find one that's ran down that doesn't look like it's been in business for a while or whatever.

[Nick Loper]

Okay. And so you come across. So LoopNet is one that I've heard of. CREXI is new to me. And so I was just, you know, looking around, what. What might be available. Found a car wash for me, but they're asking $2.4 million in Seattle, like, and it still looks kind of run down. It's like, it's marked as like a development project or something. So was it through one of those searches or how'd you come across the property that you landed on?

[Hannah Ingram]

So I've been searching for forever, and apparently this car wash had just hit the market. I didn't even know it was listed yet. And a friend of mine told me about it because I had mentioned it to her and she told me, she was like, hey, this one's for sale, is in my same town. So I just hadn't seen it yet, but it was like, up for sale. I just had not actually laid eyes on it being listed yet.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, that's great. So what's your next step?

[Hannah Ingram]

Next step was contacted the sellers, took a tour of the property, got the financials, made sure this thing was actually making money. Then we Went from there.

[Nick Loper]

So what was the sticker price or do you remember what the sticker price was?

[Hannah Ingram]

It was 150k and I talked them down to 140 so got it for 140k.

[Nick Loper]

And that's based on a multiple of their last 12 to 24 months of earnings.

[Hannah Ingram]

I don't really know how they came up with the number, but that was just kind of what they threw out there. That's what they wanted.

[Nick Loper]

It included the business and the land or was it leased on top of the land?

[Hannah Ingram]

Nope. Land, building, business equipment, everything.

[Nick Loper]

Wow. I got to move to Tennessee. That sounds way better than 2.4 million. Hannah went on to explain that she didn't actually need the $140,000 close on the business. She was able to negotiate seller financing, basically borrowing the purchase price from the current owner and then paying off that loan with the proceeds from the business. I think at the time we recorded was earning around $5,000 a month. Creative, low risk, way to do it. And definitely an inspiring episode about finding that unconventional path, inserting yourself into income streams that are already flowing. That's episode 571 in your archives. Now we've heard from a couple other entrepreneurs in this vein. Link Moser went out and bought some CA cash flow in the form of local web hosting businesses. It was something that he was already doing and I'm going to grow through acquisition. Find other little mom and pop operators that have a book of business, sometimes as little as 20 or 30 clients. But after that recurring revenue hosting and maintenance piece of it. Jono Santa Maria bought a Laundromat. So keep your eyes peeled for something that you might be able to apply your skills to and see what types of businesses might be for sale. Jono had a background in digital marketing, so he was able to improve the online presence of the laundromat. Ended up and making a couple other tweaks but ended up tripling the revenue of the business in 12 months. And so I was like, well I paid this price but I have have a feeling I'm going to be able to increase that value. And the cool thing about it is because it's a business asset, well now I'm pocketing that extra cash flow every month, but I've also in theory tripled the equity in that business as well or tripled the exit value of that too. So a way to build near term cash flow and potentially long term wealth as well. And like Hannah described some creative financing ways to go about it too. The second type of passive Income is to build cash flowing assets. So if number one was the takes money to make money option, number two is the sweat equity option. Building something of value, say a digital product, a book, an app, a course, a website that earns advertising revenue. These things obviously take some time and energy to create and to market, but can run relatively passively, often for years if you set it up right. One of my favorite examples of planting little mini digital money seeds is the digital product or printable business. And a lot of the time sellers are relying on Etsy organic search traffic or teachers pay teachers organic search traffic. So you don't necessarily need to start with an audience of your own. I loved how Cody Berman explained it in episode 665 on how even low search volume terms they can stack into significant income streams. Those are the numbers he's talking about in this clip. Estimated monthly searches on Etsy. I usually don't touch anything under 50. And some people think that's crazy. Some people, some other Etsy quote unquote gurus don't touch things that are under like 200. But for me I'm like, there's 50 people searching for this a month and there's zero competition. Yeah. And I can scoop up say even 20% of them. 10 people buy my $5 thing. Yeah, I like to think of these each as like a little mini passive income machine. Like that's 50 extra dollars per month and that 50 adds up. Like if you can get an army of these $50 per month products, even if they don't have a lot of search volume, you get 20 of those going, that's $1,000 per month in mostly passive income. Erank was the tool that Cody mentioned to estimate the search volume. We'll link that up in the show notes. Another type of digital asset that you can make money from is YouTube videos. And you don't even have to sell anything. Lately the side Hustle Nation YouTube channel as a point of reference is earning 20 to $30 a day in what I might call relatively passive income. And I say relatively because, yeah, it took some time to create the videos, but it tends to stay fairly consistent whether or not I upload anything new. Now, of course, the goal is to keep stacking evergreen videos that have that long shelf life where some of the top performing ones are stuff that I uploaded years ago. If you can add ten more hundred dollars per month videos, that's another thousand dollars a month to the bank. And serious YouTubers are going to say, dude, you're shooting way too low. That's a really modest goal and they can make tens of thousands of dollars from a single popular upload. But the idea here, create something once, get paid over and over again. That's the hope anyways. In my case like 5 to 10 minute videos, mini digital assets. A lot like the printables that Cody was talking about. Now lately I've been using a tool called Pictory Pictory to pull in a bunch of B roll clips in just a few minutes. That's really sped up the process. I've got a demo slash review video with a promo code. I can up in the show notes if you want to check out that tool. And sometimes the video asset that you create doesn't even have to be that long. Like we're talking five to 10 minutes in the example of YouTube. But with the Amazon influencer program, sometimes a one to two minute product review video can take off and generate some serious income.

[Tyler Christensen]

I think most of what makes you successful as a product reviewer has remained constant. You have to, it's work, you have to put in the time, you have to be fairly consistent. There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did, who worked really hard for six months, made 500 videos, made 20,000, $30,000 off that, but then just burnt out. And so I think the best advice I can give anyone now is set manageable goals. You know, do five videos a week, but do that consistently over a period of several months and then it starts to compound. And if you're only making pennies in the beginning, just know it's, it's a numbers game. And you know, it might not be my, my best product review. I did a review in my first year. I was about six months in and I was starting to figure out what things sold better and what was trending. And I found something that popped off and it made me $17,000. And I have not had that kind of success since then. However, that product still makes me a few hundred dollars every single month. And if I had only done my first 400 videos, I never would have had that product. And so it's just being consistent, looking for different things and improving over time as far as your product selection and as well as the style of the videos. Things like that, you just get better at it.

[Nick Loper]

17 grand from one video, you never know what's going to pop off. Yeah, there was some effort in creating that stuff, but create it once and it sits out there and can earn you passive income for sometimes years. That was Tyler Christensen from episode 656. Now the Amazon Influencer program is still by application only, but it might afford an opportunity to double or even triple dip on income. For example, after you're established as a product reviewer as as an Amazon influencer, brands start to send you product for free. They might even pay you to create the video. You're like, hey, I don't want your free product anymore. You're gonna have to pay me to do this. And a lot of times they'll say yes. And then you can earn your Amazon commissions on top of that and you might even resell the item when you're done with it. Triple dip on this, on this stuff. So that's the Amazon influencer program. Episode 656 was our update on that. Now I've got just a fraction of the videos that Tyler has uploaded. I'm maybe 60 at this point, but still made over $700 in passive income from those last year. Stacking up those mini digital assets. Another popular passive income idea under this category of building cash flowing assets is to create an online course around an area of expertise. Now, like we talked about in our recent side Hustle Trends episode with Spencer Haas, I think it's becoming harder to sell a straight up pre recorded video course. The trend seems to be shifting toward higher touch cohort based groups, personalized coaching, community participation. And the good news is that those can command a higher price point. The bad news is they're less passive from the creator's standpoint. But still. I go back to Jac Hopkins, the online course guy who's dialed in his piano in 21 days. Course marketing and sales funnel over the last 10 years so that it pretty much runs on autopilot.

[Jac Hopkins]

There's one opt in on the website. Every page will point you to that opt in and it's an ebook, a workbook called Learn 36 Popular Songs in Five Days. That book I haven't updated in a few years. It offers a lot of value to people that are in my target market. Beginners looking to get quick wins on the piano without sheet music and a lot of the traditional like music nerd stuff, like a lot of theory and whatnot. So they download that and then there's about a 12 day evergreen funnel where they get a lot of value through emails, through video and a a limited time window to get a discount on the program. So you can go to my website and buy the course at full price. I have two tiers, one's $500, one's $1,000. But inside that limited time window of the funnel, you can get in for basically 20% off. And those two packages go to $400 and $800. And that funnel has been exactly the same for many years. One of the videos in there is me and my baby sitting on my lap. Just super casual video, like less than a year old. She's about six and a half now.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, that's where you really notice the passage of time. It's like when you see your kids at these old videos or old photos, you're like, dang, that's weird because I haven't aged at all. When we recorded, Jacques had sold over $4 million worth of his piano course, including lately between 10 and $30,000 a month. That's the power of building an asset that you can sell to multiple people following a repeatable and scalable system. It's actually really similar to a software business where you sell access to a tool you created even if you're not a coder. AI can help you build these things now, which I think is really interesting. We had Pete McPherson on the show earlier this year about how he used AI to create several different web apps. Now a couple idea generating strategies he shared were to scratch your own itch, create a tool to solve a problem in your own life or business, or unbundling one feature of a more expensive tool and then selling that as a standalone product. Another one of my passive income streams is my portfolio of Kindle books, paperbacks, audiobooks, and if you ignore launch periods, those have been earning between 2 and $500 a month for years. And I'm actually starting to kick around some new book ideas this year after taking a few years off. Obviously a lot of effort to create, but can be really passive. Or once the book is out there in nonfiction, it's probably better off to consider your book as an authority builder. The book has a business card mentality and consider any royalty income as really just a bonus. For me it's a top of the funnel. It's a discovery point. If people are searching for side hustle information on Amazon, I hope they find the books and enter into the ecosystem that way. But it's, you know, obviously I'll take the royalties too. Other self publishing strategies that can tap into the power of Amazon would be low content books like journals or diaries or coloring books. Maybe even created with the help of AI. We had Aaron Kerr on the show years ago. He said he was making. He made like $100,000 from public domain publishing. His bestseller was this Anne of Green Gables compilation, if memory serves. So lots of different ways to go about it and tap into the power of the pre existing Amazon marketplace in the example of Kindle books, paperbacks, audiobooks. Now also under this category of building cash flowing assets, I would include websites or blogs. But the marketing the SEO landscape has been challenging lately to say the least. If you can drive traffic from social media, from Pinterest, from email or even paid ads to a site monetized with advertising or affiliate partnerships, it can still be a viable business and one where every piece of content can pay you over and over again. I mean, some articles that I drafted years ago are still bringing in revenue every day, just not as much as they once did. So that's the second type of passive income and one we cover quite a bit on the show because usually the startup costs are pretty low. It's the sweat equity side hustle. The third type of passive income is renting or selling access to assets that you own or control. And I'll share some fun examples of entrepreneurs doing just that right after this when you're running a business, every missed call is money left on the table. Customers expect speed. Think about the last time you had a plumbing emergency. If the first plumber didn't answer, my guess is you moved on to the next one on the list. With our sponsor, OpenPhone, you'll never miss an opportunity to connect with your customers. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer, so that means no more carrying around two phones or or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. That way any team member can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Right now, OpenPhone is offering Side Hustle show listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com sidehustle that's o p e n p h o n e com openphone.com sidehustlez and if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone no missed calls, no missed customers who not how. That's the unlock that transforms side hustlers into business owners instead of business doers. You're always going to run into problems, and problem solving is a really important skill. But I'm constantly trying to remind myself I don't need to know how to solve everything. I just need to be able to find the people that do know how to solve it. Who, not how and when you need to hire great talent fast. You need our sponsor Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. On top of that, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs, all with no monthly subscriptions and no long term contracts. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@inn Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to indeed.com Sidehustleshow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. The third type of passive income is to rent or sell access to assets that you control. And this could include extra space around your house. It could be your backyard pool with a site like swimply, or even the data generated by your phone through services like kden. And we've seen several examples from side Hustle show guests renting out things that they own, sometimes with a surprising level of demand.

[Dustin Heiner]

I went right into panic mode of oh my gosh, I just bought this RV for a lot of money and my wife doesn't want to be here and jumped onto Craigslist and threw it up for rent.

[Nick Loper]

Okay, so you've got this big expensive asset slash liability at the moment, but hopefully it turns into an asset sitting in the driveway and said, well shoot, what am I going to do with this thing? So you turn around, put it up for rent on Craigslist. What kind of reaction does that get? Any takers? Yeah, you know, it blew my mind.

[Dustin Heiner]

I literally had inquiries coming in within a couple hours. So the light bulb like immediately went off. People are, hey, I need it for this weekend because that was in July when I purchased it for.

[Nick Loper]

So it's like in the middle of.

[Dustin Heiner]

Summer and people oh hey, we're going camping this weekend or that weekend, you know.

[Nick Loper]

Sure. So it was, it was wild. That's Gar Russell from Fireside RV who ended up buying a few more RVs to rent out before transitioning to a lower overhead model of helping other people rent out their RVs and acting kind of like a property manager slash booking agent. Yes, there's work involved, but your income is tied to the asset, not necessarily the hours you're putting in. A similar strategy would be rental arbitrage, leasing long term and renting short term with the landlord's consent. Of course, we've heard from guests like Richie Matthews doing this with apartment units. And it was an Ikea explosion was the line I remember from that episode. So you've got a little more upfront costs in signing a lease and furnishing the place, but still relatively low risk if you're confident in your market research demand. And of course, a lot less investment than just buying a property outright. But in several cases, we've seen entrepreneurs buying smaller assets for the sole purpose of renting them out. Like Lenny Tim did with his mobility scooter rental service.

[Lenny Tim]

A brand new one is about 1500 bucks right now. A little less, a little more. But I actually bought mine used and I look for about 500 bucks. I go on Facebook, Marketplace or any other local marketplace and I'm looking to get it for about 500 bucks. So as you can, you know, see, I pretty much get my money back within 1, 2, 3 rentals.

[Nick Loper]

Yeah, I'm thinking, yeah, if it's 250 a week plus 75 delivery like a couple weeks later, I'm, I'm in the black on this, on this unit. How many do you have at this point?

[Lenny Tim]

Right now? I only have seven.

[Nick Loper]

So I say only. I mean, that's like, that's a pretty serious fleet.

[Lenny Tim]

Yeah, it's not bad. I have seven right now and I, you know, I make it work. I could definitely have a lot more, but I just, I keep it completely a side business.

[Nick Loper]

The other interesting thing that Lenny did, and this is from episode 564, is he didn't even buy that first one until he had a critical mass of inbound inquiries wanting to rent from him.

[Lenny Tim]

When I came up with the idea, it was back in 2019, my first thing was to just build a website just to see if there's a demand. I wanted to see if there's a demand for these scooter rentals. I didn't go out to buy any equipment. I didn't do anything like that. So that's pretty much how I started just to build out a really nice website just to see if I'm getting customers, if people are going to call, if people are going to make any requests before I actually go out and buy anything or commit to the business.

[Nick Loper]

Did you do anything specifically on the SEO front to build backlinks, to build the Google business profile, to do anything other than just having like the exact, you know, what somebody might be searching for in the URL and then in the content on the site itself?

[Lenny Tim]

Well, first of all, the Name La Mobility Scooter Rental. So I tried to get a domain that's gonna, you know, match, I guess, search pretty, pretty good. I didn't really do anything special. I don't know much about SEO. I just built a website. I did as much backend SEO as I could. Whatever they asked me to fill out, I filled it all in. You know, mobility scooter rentals, mobility scooters, all that kind of stuff. Put some good pictures, put up as much info as I. I'm pretty sure I, you know, opened up a Google my business page right away. And I may have did the Yelp as well at the same time, but that's pretty much it.

[Nick Loper]

Did you have a metric in mind? Well, if I get five requests a month, then I'm doing it or something like that.

[Lenny Tim]

Probably more than that. Yeah. I definitely had something in mind where I would want to make decent money. And it would probably have to be several requests a day.

[Nick Loper]

During this time, Lenny would reply to customers and say, hey, sorry, we're booked up at that time, or we don't have the inventory available. And then only after hitting that critical mass of inquiries did he go out and buy his first scooter. He even did that in a pretty lean startup way as well. Like, we talked about finding one used on Facebook Marketplace. Now, I'm a fan of these lower cost, unconventional rental assets. Like, we did an episode about moving boxes, you know, renting out portable plastic boxes for moves. We've done photo booths, we've done portable hot tubs. We did an episode about renting out dresses. And here is actually Summer Fisher from that episode explaining why dresses are a unique asset class people probably don't think about.

[Summer Fisher]

When you're buying a dress, you're buying cash flow, basically. So the dress, just like a house, the dress is the asset, and I'm buying the cash flow from the rentals. And so I've got to kind of make a mathematical decision. Is, you know, the money best sitting in the dress or is it best moving it on and buying something that's kind of yielding a better rental?

[Nick Loper]

She even gave a couple ideas on how you could get started for free.

[Summer Fisher]

If you want to get started. The two ways you can get started without putting a lot of money into inventory is you can work on a consignment model. So you can go to all your friends and family and say, who's got dresses they want me to rent?

[Nick Loper]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it.

[Summer Fisher]

Yeah, you could get started that way. Or the other way is. And this might be a bit controversial, but you can buy things on say if you're in the us you could buy things on somewhere like revolve that have, you know, change of mind return policies and you could see it put it up for rent, see if it rents. If it doesn't rent, you send it back and before you have to pay your credit card. And then you can get a feel for what rents. And at least then if you have gotten that piece that rents, you've already recouped, you know, a third of your investment straight off the bat before you've actually had to pay any money out again.

[Nick Loper]

That's Summer Fisher from episode 652. Now what if you don't want to deal with physical assets, physical products at all? There's another type of side hustle that I would lump into this rent or sell access to assets category and that's product licensing. Here's Stephen Key from Inventright on why it makes such an interesting side hustle.

[I]

It doesn't require any capital. You don't have to set up a company. And there's so many companies out there that need us creative people. So they're looking for ideas. And every year there's just more and more opportunity for us to submit ideas to companies and let them pay us royalties for everyone they sell.

[Nick Loper]

So that's the basic business model is saying, hey, I am the idea guy who we just had on the show and I'm going to turn around and essentially sell that intellectual property to some company who can turn that into a product and make money off it.

[I]

Absolutely. You're basically renting your idea to a company, okay, and they're going to pay you on everyone they sell. So you don't have to start a company, you don't have to worry about manufacturing or raising money or do any of those things. And what's really great about it, Nick, it's really speed to market today, right? If you start a company, raise capital, all those type of things that you need to do to be successful, it takes a lot of time and effort. When you license an idea, you find that perfect partner that has relationships, distribution money, they can put your product on a shelf. Extremely, like extremely quick.

[Nick Loper]

Stephen went on to explain that 5% of gross sales is a pretty typical product licensing agreement, which may not seem like a lot, but if you think about the distribution and economies of scale that some of these larger brands have, it can really add up, especially for something with super low startup costs. I mean, you're basically taking something for free. From your brain and getting paid for it. And Steven had some great tips on how to approach companies with your ideas. But one thing that was surprising to me is a lot of companies already have a process for this. They're really open to crowdsourcing product ideas from people like you and me and paying us for them. For example, if you look up Hasbro submit ideas, you're going to find a structured program called Hasbro Spark that lays it out, how it all works, how to submit your proposal. So be sure to check out that full episode with Stephen for more on how product licensing works. I'll link that up in the show notes. And I also want to add that product ideas aren't the only thing that you can license. We've seen examples. You can license photography. You can license voiceover work. You could license music. I think we've got examples of just about all of those in the archives. So for that third category of passive income, think unconventional rentals. Think creative assets that people might want to use occasionally but maybe can't justify buying themselves or they don't have a place to store themselves. Or licensing your work or your ideas again, trying to figure out ways to get paid multiple times from work you do once or something that you buy once, and maybe you may not even have to buy it, like in Gar's example of the RV. I'm renting out other people's RVs. Or maybe you could work out a consignment sort of deal with somebody else and act as a property manager for that asset like Summer mentioned. You know, maybe I could consign other people's dresses and do rentals for those. The fourth type of passive income is what I call reverse passive income. Reverse passive income comes from cutting your ongoing monthly expenses. This is Ben Franklin. A penny saved is a penny earned, right? And it's actually better than that because, well, your earned income is going to be taxed. So simply spending less money might be the fastest path to improving your bottom line. And the truth is, it's a lot more fun when you view it, when you view saving money as a game instead of a necessity. One way I try and do this is through what I call the substitution game, which aim better, faster, cheaper alternatives to what I'm already spending money on. What that looks like in practice is taking stock of your monthly spending. Easy way to do it. Just bring up your bank statement or credit card statement and look at each transaction and ask, is there a better alternative here? And you might find some room to completely eliminate or cancel certain Expenses or subscriptions. But I find the substitution game doesn't even have to feel as drastic. Classic example was switching from Verizon to Ting to Mint Mobile for cell phone service over the years. That's added thousands of dollars in reverse passive income to our bottom line. It could be renegotiating your TV or Internet service to get a better deal. It could be shopping around for a better car insurance rate. It could be dropping that annual fee credit card. One huge one for us that a lot of people don't consider was actually a big substitution. Joshua Sheets mentioned on the show probably 10 years ago and that was moving to a lower cost of living area or a lower tax area. Now the Seattle area definitely not a low cost of living area, but it had one big advantage over California where we used to live in that it's a no income tax state, Washington state, no income tax. If you've got a portable skill, if you're location independent, if you're a remote worker, this is one of the biggest levers you can pull. But it's obviously pretty uprooting to pull off, so not for everyone. On a smaller scale, one thing you might consider is a house hacking arrangement to offset some of your living expenses. This is where you buy or rent more space than you need and you rent out a portion of it. On the business side, the substitution game is called Operation Tool Swap. This is where you look at your tech stack or your monthly software expenses and you see if there are alternatives that would accomplish the same thing. Steve Chu and I talked about Zapier Zapier earlier this year when they went out and like doubled their pricing, we switched to make com same functionality, fraction of the price. Appsumo is a great resource for finding deals. You might even pause services that you don't use every month or have some duplicated functionality. Like we were able to pause Otter, which was an AI transcription service that we used really consistently because it turns out that same functionality is already built into descript. I created the Robo NIC AI voice clone in 11 labs, but I don't use them every month so we just toggle that subscription on and off as needed. Even Ahrefs introduced a lower tier price plan that was still more credits than we needed. So we were able to drop down to that without any impact to the business and save some money every month. Now for personal, what I might call luxury or non essential expenses, I try to apply a 30 day waiting period. Call it a cooling off period. How it works is if there's something you want to Buy. Just put a note in your calendar to ping yourself in 30 days and if you find you still want it, go for it. But oftentimes you'll find you lived a perfectly happy existence in the meantime as it just makes you re evaluate how important it really is and might save you some money along the way. In our episode on creative ways to Save Money, Jen Smith gave us her four question framework to use before any purchase.

[J]

Before I buy anything, I use these four questions. How can I get it for free? So like a buy nothing group or free on Facebook Marketplace or from a friend, either trading or borrowing. If I can't get it for free, how can I get it for low cost? And so that's where secondhand comes in. How can I get it on Poshmark ebay? Thredup? Can I buy it from Facebook Marketplace Thrift store? If I can't get that and I don't spend a ton of time searching for these, I'm, you know, depending on how fast I need something, I'm not searching for years.

[Nick Loper]

Right, right.

[J]

I'm just, I'm looking, I'm trying to get creative before I just first go out and buy it new. If I can't get it low cost, I ask how can I get a deal on it? Like how soon is the next sales cycle coming up? Because they always come back around. And then if I really need it and I can't wait for a sale, how can I buy full price and not feel guilty about it? So is there a way I can buy locally or sustainably? Something like that. So those are the four questions that I ask before I buy something. In order to save money now, ahead.

[Nick Loper]

Of any big purchase, I try and do a few things. Obviously shop around, try and get the best price, maybe even try negotiating if you feel like that's a thing. That is an option. Maybe add it to your cart from a couple different stores and then let it sit a few days. A lot of online stores have some kind of abandoned cart email offer where they may send you a special discount to complete your purchase. You'll also want to check a site like Cashback Monitor to see how you might maximize your cash back on the order. Basically, there are a bunch of affiliate sites that split their commission with you when you buy through their links at no extra cost. So it's like getting free money. Rakuten is the one that I've used most consistently and have saved hundreds of dollars at this point. Another thing you can do is check for card linked offers, for example. You can look in your Chase or Bank of America or Capital One portal and you'll often find an extra 5 to 10 15% back on stuff you might be buying already. You just have to check the box and sometimes you got to buy through their link or sometimes you got to add that offer to your card. Typically only check for bigger purchases and these are usually listed in Cashback Monitor as well as a way to check multiple different portals at once. Another thing you can do is buy discount gift cards. Costco can be a good source for these. I actually used to buy big discount Costco gift cards at like 5 to 10% off through some discount gift card site. Just a little bit. Little ways to save money on what you're already spending. And then once or twice a year if I know we have some expenses coming up, I'll look at new credit card sign up offers, sign up bonuses. These usually range from 200 to $1,000 in value for spending money we were going to be spending anyway. So it's a way to mentally offset the cost of the new thing like an appliance purchase or plane tickets for the family. We also did an episode recently on bank bonuses. Not entirely passive because you got to set up a direct deposit and meet some other minimum requirements. But my guest Dylan said it was easily a $200 to $300 an hour side hustle that he was able to do consistently with one new account a week. And I'd seen those offers before but always thought it's too big of a hurdle to switch over my entire banking life for a few hundred dollars bonus. He said. Nick, you're looking at it all wrong. You don't have to switch over your primary account, you just have to meet these few requirements. Check the boxes, collect the bonus, lather, rinse, repeat on the next one and all of a sudden it looks a lot more attainable. So that is episode663 if you want to check that one out. But that's reverse passive income. Perhaps the easiest of the four to start with. Get some quick wins under your belt. Improve your bottom line by saving money, getting some easy cash back. So to recap the four types of passive income in this episode, number one was to buy cash flowing assets. We talked about real estate, we talked about vending machines, we talked about small businesses, we talked about dividend investing. Lots of different ways to go about that. Number two was to build cash flowing assets. Remember this is the true side hustle. Sweat equity option. Digital products, printables, courses, ebooks, websites, anything under that umbrella. Number three was to rent or sell access to assets that you control. RVs, cars through Turo, space in your backyard, shed through neighbor.com, it could be Airbnb, it could be renting out mobility scooters, photo booths, dresses, portable hot tubs, moving boxes. We got lots of fun examples on this kind of rental business like this semi passive asset where you get paid over and over again from something that you bought once or maybe even you don't own in the example of GAR's RV rental service. And the fourth type of passive income is that reverse passive income where you can cut recurring expenses. You can play the substitution game, maximize your cash back strategically, work out credit card bonuses or bank bonuses into your year and maybe even consider a 30 day no spend challenge or 30 day waiting period before any big purchase. But my recommendation is to start with a small passive income goal. Something that is small enough to be attainable but big enough that it's still interesting and meaningful to you. That's a sweet spot for me. It was $1,000 a month and there was a specific project I was hoping would get me there. That was my virtual assistant website back in 2011, 2012, 2013 and eventually it did. And so that was really rewarding. That was like, I'm going to build up this passive income stream. But hopefully this episode has sparked some ideas on the many, many different ways side hustlers have started to build their passive income. Building passive income streams that aren't directly tied to your time is such a crucial step in building financial independence, even if they start out super small. I remember a line from Mike Newton ten plus years ago on the show about he said, I'm more excited about earning $5 passively than $5,000 actively because that $5 didn't trade time for it, right? It had the power to scale, really empowering and encourage you to carve out a portion of your week dedicated to pursuing time leveraged income. Nobody's going to do it for you. It's not going to happen by accident. You got to take control. You got to be proactive about it and do that big thanks to all our guests for sharing their passive income advice over the years. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Be sure to check out Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one that is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message, let them know and say, hey, what kind of a passive income would you like to add to your life? Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle show. Hustle on the.