Passive Income

Kathleen Shannon 0:02
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Emily Thompson 0:29
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Kathleen Shannon 1:13
All right. So this minisode we're talking about passive income. Yes. And I think we're talking about it, because we're both busting our asses right now. And work in life. We're doing a lot of stuff right now. Yes. But hopefully it means that we won't be doing a whole lot of work later. Because we're creating and generating streams of passive income.

Emily Thompson 1:40
Yes. So passive income, if you don't know what that is, it's the idea of creating a product or service that will ideally in air quotations make you money while you sleep. So it's the it's doing e courses, or email subscriptions or creating content that generates you income and can be purchased without you being there to facilitate the sale or the carrying out of whatever the service or product is. So passive income is passively earning money on something that has been pre created, essentially. But I

Kathleen Shannon 2:21
think that the name, passive income is a little tricky, because it makes it seem like you don't have to do anything. Right, which is not the case, not really how to probably work your ass off to make passive income.

Emily Thompson 2:37
Yes, passive income is the least passive or least passive way you can make it make money. Because because it does require a ton of work. So Kathleen and I are going to talk a little bit today about about how it is that you create passive income and what that actually means in the long run. So essentially, passive income isn't about doing less work in the future. It's about actually, that's exactly what it is. It's about doing, but it's doing tons of work now, with the idea of doing less work later.

Kathleen Shannon 3:10
Right. And so chalene Johnson was a big inspiration for even wanting to record this minisode we recorded a full episode with her a little while back. What is that episode number 20. So if you haven't listened to that you should listen to it because we were talking to chalene. And we're like, oh my gosh, you're doing so much like how are you managing your life right now. And she is like, ladies, everything that you're seeing that I'm doing right now, I created years ago. So her Pio videos, her turbo fit videos, and even some of her online programs. Yeah, it's all stuff that she created a while ago, but is now reaping the benefits from and so we want to talk a little bit about the things that Emily and I are doing on a smaller scale because we are not fitness celebrities.

Emily Thompson 4:03
Not yet. Maybe you might not yet.

Kathleen Shannon 4:04
Who knows. Maybe next year.

Emily Thompson 4:08
Hey, maybe next year, I want to start a fitness.

Kathleen Shannon 4:14
I can throw on an awesome leotard mandatory like one of those song leotard

Emily Thompson 4:23
I was gonna say I want like a good old Jane Fonda with like some really high like legs and some very colorful tight that's what I'm going regardless, we're not talking about video. Actually, that's what we're gonna do with our YouTube

Kathleen Shannon 4:39
I'm just gonna turn in just working out with our butts hanging out.

Emily Thompson 4:44
Yeah, basically. Um, so yeah, we want to talk about some some ways that we we utilize passive income to make money in our businesses because passive income or I think more correctly, recurring income or income that can be not more important. But hand in hand with passive is recurring income. And this idea of creating a product or service now that can pay you for months or years to come. That way, you're setting yourself up to be a little less reactive in your business and a lot more proactive with how it is that you can make money. So one way that that Kathleen and I have done this that has become, that has really come to the forefront of our business, or especially the podcast lately, is our boss bundle. So about two years ago, but a year and a half, two years ago, I created an email subscription called Get your shit together. And it was a six week, one email a week course, that walked people through how to get your shit together. And it covered things like morning routines and finding your productive time of the day. And it was just an email subscription where I wrote the content, I loaded it into my system. And I put it for sale on my website. So it was a ton of work to do. It was a lot of writing, I created worksheets, I created playlists, like all kinds of things, put in a ton of work for what essentially at the time was making zero money. So working for free to create to create an email subscription, and then I put it on my site and have been selling it for the past year and a half or two years. And in Kathleen, you did the same

Kathleen Shannon 6:18
well. So I see Emily do this, like Emily is always telling me like Kathleen, email subscriptions are where it's at, or Kathleen, retreats and workshops or where it's at, or Kathleen ecourses, or where it's at. And so anytime Emily tells me where something that I'm like, Alright, I guess I'll do one too. So while I was pregnant, I decided to do my own email subscription series with the goal of paying for my own maternity leave with my email subscription series. So I created one that is 16 emails. So it's four emails a week, over four weeks. And mine is probably like, I feel like Emily yours is more of like to dues and tasks and just how to get stuff done. And then mine is kind of more about getting in the right headspace. So it's for people who need a little extra guidance in dreaming and scheming and taking small steps to design the kind of life that they want to live from the small daily routines to really the big picture of what you really want. And so in my email subscription series, I've included worksheets and daily homework exercises, tips for goal setting and decision making. I talked about establishing morning routines and managing your time plus, like my little extras. So you have your playlist and even I think recipes and yours, right I do. So I do weekly meditations and mantras, and I'm going to be sharing, we're actually both going to be sharing in future minisodes a couple of excerpts from our bundle. But um, I created this email subscription series, and I still haven't quite paid for my maternity leave from selling those, but it is nice. So minus $40. And yours is also $40. And well yours is actually 39 because you probably read something from a pricing guru that was like, if you use threes and nines, you'll sell more. But I like it, I like a good even numbers, raise $40. And then it's just nice to I'll be working and I'll see a little email come through. And it's like you sold a an email subscription series. So it's just like a few like 40 bucks here and there. It's awesome. So I think the both of our subscriptions were kind of slowing down a little. And we were like, Hey, we should take that content and bundle it up together and offer it to our being boss listeners at a deal. So we're selling it now for $70. And you can check that out at love being boss comm slash bundle. And this isn't necessarily to sell you on our bundle, we just want to tell you how we did it. And so you can get it for $70 together, which is a $10 discount total. Sure. Right. And so we've bundled it together, which totally makes sense because our point of view and our style is really aligned, which is why we have a podcast together, right. But we were able to like renew excitement and interest right around the podcast and give people something that they could buy. And so now we're still selling stuff that we created two years ago. Yes.

Emily Thompson 9:32
So but let's let's also talk about what this means because this happens a lot I know you've ran into this with clients and I know I have because I build e courses for my clients sometimes. And one of the common misconceptions that that I am faced with, with my clients is this idea that you build things like this, whether it be email subscriptions, or an ecourse or some other form of passive income, and that it literally becomes a passive thing that you never have to touch again. Because that's not the case.

Kathleen Shannon 10:02
I think that the myth was created by I think it's Pat Flynn of Smart Passive income. This is his fault if you're listening. So what Pat Flynn did is he created and a I think he was in architecture school, or something like that he was in some sort of school and created basically Cliff's notes for studying to pass this big exam that he was doing this big architecture exam. And so he was selling his notes. And there was such a market for it that literally like he woke up and overnight was millionaire, that might be exaggerated. But that's kind of like the dream. Whenever you write something like this, like, oh, if I create this $40 email subscription series, if I just have 1000 people buy it, that's $40,000 overnight. That's a nice dream. But it's not often the reality, before we get into all the work that it takes to market manage and promote your passive income and these streams of revenue, and these projects that will make you money while you're sleeping, I want to talk about just a few other avenues of passive income that we both have in our businesses. And so for me, one of the other things I have, that really is not feeling passive right now, because we just launched our ecourse. So it's the braid method, branding ecourse for creative entrepreneurs, we have spent the last nine months consolidating three of our E courses that Emily, you were managing for us every month. Yep, launching, promoting getting people signed in, we decided to go ahead and combine everything, plus add four more lessons, and sell it in a way that anyone can buy at any time. And so that's we decided to make it more passive. And that's something that I even consulted with you a lot on, or even consulted me on, which is how can we make this more passive so that we're not having to manage it quite as much. So the ecourses are a big one. And then I think that's it for me, I have my rental properties, which I mentioned in the minisode. Yeah, that is kind of passive income in a way again, it doesn't feel quite so passive whenever you have tenants calling you and they're like the

Emily Thompson 12:16
toilets broken? Well, you have to manage it, you have to market it, you have to promote it. Like that's still part of the of the follow through of passive income. Yeah, you guys have that. And then dry coaching, which is now part of the being boss bundle. But also you can still get DIY coaching.

Kathleen Shannon 12:30
Exactly. So you can get it so low and you can still get get your shit together.

Emily Thompson 12:34
Yeah, in its own right. Yeah, so so I have Get your shit together, which is part of the being boss bundle, but also my own email subscription. For a little while I did. I did premade website templates, which were a great source of passive income, but nightmare to manage. And then also the job of promoting and marketing those things, e courses as well. So I've done a couple of E courses in the in the past. And again, it's a really great way to to hunker down, create some good content, sell it, but there's still the management of it, and to talk about ecourse management because I know that's something that a lot of people are interested in. So you guys did it in for you guys. It was pretty passive. I mean, you guys did the marketing. So as braid, it was relatively passive for you guys. But that's because you're handing off all of the managing to me. So every, which is fine.

Kathleen Shannon 13:29
Totally on your wall. And to mention that we're paying you for that. Yes. So it's not like, again, entirely, there's an expense a cost associated with that. But also it wasn't it didn't feel entirely passive because every single blog post that I wrote was with the intention of marketing and promoting an E course that was open for registration or in session. And so I really did feel like I was spending a lot of time working on making sure that people knew that they could buy this thing.

Emily Thompson 13:59
Definitely it is. So that's that's sort of where where we I want to unplowed the the misconception that that it really is just passive because you can create a product and put it on your website and just anticipate people buying it. But unless you do some sort of promoting or marketing and there may be some management involved that no one's gonna buy it. In which case you don't have the passive income. So one of the things that we're doing here is we're creating like a small library of small ebooks. So really short, little topics, you know, probably going to sell them like 510 15 bucks apiece, to create more passive income for our business as well. But again, that's coming with the notion that we will have to one create them, then someone's gonna have to manage them. David's gonna have to do the bookkeeping, for all of that income coming in. So though it does mean that I'm doing lots of work now and less work later. They're still Work that does come later in terms of passive income.

Kathleen Shannon 15:03
Okay, another thing is for you, Emily, because you have a partnership with Adobe Business Catalyst, which is what you develop your websites through. I mean, think about that. Yeah. So you do, like hosting?

Emily Thompson 15:16
I do, right? That is probably the most passive income that I have. And and even then it's so passive that you don't really think about it is it? Is it all good one, it is really passive, but I still have to, I have to sell Adobe Business Catalyst in order to get that money. And I have to like, keep my clients there and make sure their websites are always fantastic. So they stay there. But that has been a huge source of passive income in my business. So finding really great affiliate programs that are something that you're going to use often in your business, a really great one, like if you're a like an accountant, for you know, creative businesses or whatever, having an affiliate program with something like zero, or some sort of like, online accounting system that will allow you to generate income by doing what you're going to be doing anyway, is a really great way and really the most passive way to build passive income for your business. I mean, that's huge. Um, are there any other sources that we have?

Kathleen Shannon 16:16
Well, with fresh books was with our sponsorship with fresh books count as passive income. I mean, we're selling bass, we're selling advertising space, right. And so basically, we have our fresh books tag, and we record some fresh books, ads that we put into every podcast episode. And so it's a little bit of work, but not a whole lot.

Emily Thompson 16:41
Yeah, it does know what we're going to be recording the podcast anyway. So putting in ADS here and there, and helping promote their business in exchange for money is super passive. I mean, that's definitely money that comes in now. That is just sort of like a fun thing, that I'm not working one on one with a client to get that money, I'm doing something I'm already doing to, to promote them and receiving money in exchange. So for you writing your blog post to promote your ecourse, you're going to be writing those blog posts Anyway, you just have to be a little bit more mindful and doing it. So yeah, it wasn't it was.

Kathleen Shannon 17:16
I think that's about it for like our streams of passive income. So I guess what we want to tell you all listening is that if you're if you have an idea that you want to create, ie courses or ebooks or any sort of revenue, that would be more passive, just know that it's going to be a lot of work now, a little more work later. And then hopefully, some that you can delegate down to a team, which is something that we're always talking about, we'll be talking about more in the future, so that it really does start to feel passive.

Kathleen Shannon 17:50
This minisode was brought to you by Twenty20. Check them out at Twenty20.com/beingboss, that's t w e n t y 20, as in the number.com slash being boss.

Emily Thompson 18:04
Did you like this minisode. Be sure to check us out on our website at beingboss.club, where you can find more from being boss including our full episodes, minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing lists so that you can get access to behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself to help you be more boss in your work and life. Do the work be boss