At the start of the year my wife and I sit down and do some “numbers” together.
We work out our bills, goals, expenses, income.
That kind of stuff.
It’s boring as hell.
BUT – it shows us a very VERY important number.
“The number we’re happy with.”
We list out all the stuff that we want to do, how we want to live our lives.
And that’s our magic number, basically.
If our income hits that number, we live the life we want.
And that number is way WAY smaller than most people might think.
Your number is probably smaller than you realise too.
Which is why “passive income” is such a game changer.
Because within a year or two, you can basically take all the time you need/want off and…everything still runs.
But what is the #1 mistake people make when trying to achieve passive income?
It’s simple.
Let’s say that you want renewable energy for your house.
You’ve got a lot of options.
From solar, to wind, to water and hydro. There’s geothermal, biofuel, off-peak-battery storage and more.
Hypothetically you could have any of these powering your home with clean, renewable, free energy.
But – each one takes roughly a year to build.
For that first year, your costs, energy, time and consumption will all be higher.
Some are certainly easier than others. And let’s say for the sake of argument, all of them have the same output.
What a lot of people do is buy all the parts to some of the power sources, and piecemeal put them together bit by bit, swapping between projects as things get harder.
Wrong type of roof? Skip the solar and try to set up the water wheel.
Need to dig up the river bed a little? Skip that and set up the wind turbine.
Logistics slowing you down? Try the off-peak-battery solution.
And as the months and weeks go by, they’ll keep adding bits and pieces to all the different options, without seeing anything through to completion.
On the other hand, their neighbour has decided on solar.
It’s not perfect (nothing is) but it’s as good a place as any to start.
Her roof isn’t quite right, so she removes an old shed and places the panels in her garden.
The wiring is tricky and the storage is expensive.
But slowly slowly, bit by bit, her dedication to ONE power source means that after a year, she has a fully working solar power system.
Her neighbour was doing a little with a LOT of ideas.
She, did a LOT with one idea.
Passive income is a long term, boring, bit-by-bit approach.
Yes – some dickhead internet marketer will tell you that he did $100,000 in 8 days.
It’s basically business porn. It doesn’t exist in the real world.
And, he isn’t in your garden with your roof and your needs.
The mistake people make is not focusing on one method and going after it. Over and over. Until they’ve hit their goal.
