Passive Income Is Not Real.

Hello there! Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. Whatever time it is you’re having there, I hope it’s good.

There’s an old internet wives tale, you’ve probably heard about before. It’s two words and it’s sounds great. I’ll tell you what it is, just after the intro theme song.

Ok welcome back. A popular term that was floating around when the internet started getting big and popular as a way for people to start a business was ‘passive income’.

You’ll still hear it occasionally, and more importantly it’s really all anyone wants isn’t it?

Let’s say $400 in your bank account every day? Just by doing nothing. That’s $2,800 a week. That’s $146,000 a year. Just by doing nothing.

The idea was and still is that you build a money making system and once it’s built, it just sends you passive income. Without having to do anything ever again, besides check your bank account you’ll just keep getting magic money in your back account.

This ideal was usually linked to the internet. The idea of setting up a website, or a few websites that all made money together. I think there was a handful of people who made the real money and they were the ones that sold the information on how to do it.

PASSIVE INCOME IS NOT REAL

There, I’ve said it. Nothing that good lasts forever. And nothing valuable, comes free.

I say this even though I have a few websites like that that I set up years ago, haven’t touched for years since besides just some small maintenance work to keep them standing – and these websites turn about $1400 a month. On auto pilot, that is passive income.

I receive passive income but even I say it’s not real. Let me explain:

There may come a time, and I hope there comes a time that you think you have one of these magic machines. Be it a website, an app or something else. You’ll find yourself smiling from ear to ear thinking about yourself as a genius.

But it won’t last. And again, I hope it does, but it won’t. And that’s ok. Now you’ve been warned about it.
The websites I have on auto pilot also won’t last.

I don’t know what it is about the universe, but it seems to have a way of correcting these things.
Once a upon a time, when we all had Nokia phones. You could get different ringtones for them, do you remember that?

You could get your favorite song as the ringtone on your phone. What you might not know is a lot of people made a lot of money on the other side of that trend. There were people who set up some of the first automatic billing on mobile phones. So little did the customers know how got some of these ringtones, but they were being charged $4 or so a month. Some more, some less.

The people who got rich off that thought they had stumbled into something great too. But it didn’t last, nothing does.

There was a big crack down on it, and also people got smarter and got better access to their mobile phone bills and could see what was being charged. And very quickly, it all stopped and some people went to gaol and others bankrupt when they were asked to repay the money.

This is an extreme example of course. You would never set something like that up I’m sure.

I’m guessing that most people want to live that lifestyle though of riches coming in and no or very little work going out.

But that freedom of sleeping in, and working from home comes from the work itself. It’s not magic.
The freedom is in the work. Think about a car that is driving along on a flat road, and it runs out of petrol. You would have to get out and push the car by yourself to the nearest petrol station.

The first inch seems impossible. The first metre almost breaks your back. But then when the car gets rolling, you’ve done it. It’s almost moving by itself. So you stop pushing and it keeps rolling.

But nothing keeps moving by itself. And no website is going to continue to pay your salary every week, without your work.

It might only take you one hour a day, but you’ll need to do that one hour. As soon as you stop investing in that hour every day, the momentum will stop, and progress and profits will start rolling to a stop. One way or another.

Remember, the freedom is in the work.

Lesson From Roger Federer

I guess you know who Roger Federer is. The Swiss guy who has won more Open Tennis Titles than any other male in history. Roger Federer has won over $100million US in prize money and has earned several times that in sponsorships.

You’d perhaps forgive him for thinking that he has what it takes to win a tennis match and therefore maybe start to slip a little bit because he skips the odd training session.

In January 2017, Roger Federer won the Australian Open Tennis Championship. (he recently won it again in 2018).

Below is a picture though from 2017 that I want to show you and ask: does this look like a man who expected to win?

I’m no psychologist, but when you look at this picture, that expression on his face is pure surprise and delight. Don’t you think?

He was in the Final of the championship, so he knew he had a chance of winning. But throughout that game, like he always does, Federer took it point by point. Didn’t get wrapped up in bad calls by the umpires, or yell at the crowd. He just focused on winning the next point. And then on winning the next point, and then the next point.

He was so laser focused on every single point that when the last point is played there is still that moment of shock when he realises it’s over, and he’s done it. He’s won! (after 20 championships and probably 1,000 other tennis games)

Federer knows he has to focus and win every point. And when he loses a point that’s ok. He knows he has to focus and win the next point. Maybe he loses that one too, making it two in a row. That’s ok, he knows he has to focus and win the next point.

By focusing on the work like this, he more often than not wins each individual point. And that’s the only way to win a game; win the majority of the points. It’s professionalism at its best.

The moral of this story is, you need to put in the work. The best put in the work.

If you want to launch a website that attracts thousands of readers every day and makes you $500 everyday. You can do it, but the website is not going to make itself popular.

And when that website starts making you $50 a day, if you then stop putting in that hour of work every day that $50 is going to drop to $48, then $45 until it fades away to $0.

The internet likes what’s new and up to date, and popular. It will be your job to keep your website there.
Your freedom is in the work. Even if it is just one hour a day.

Ok that’s it for now. I look forward to talking with you again very soon.

Enjoy the rest of your day.