The Truth About Passive Income

Is starting with a pile of money the only path to passive income?

What’s the opposite of passive income?

An active income J.O.B., right?

Punch in. Clock out. Get a check.

This is totally fine for a lot of folks.

For some though…

It’s like getting kicked in the private parts every morning when the alarm goes off.

I did it.

For almost 3 full decades.

I didn’t HATE IT.

I just felt kinda dead inside.

Like, empty?

There had to be more to life than this?

Truth is, at times, I think my wife, my sons and my family all wondered if I were dead too.

I missed anniversaries.

I missed birthdays.

And my pops was always asking me to go fishing with him.

You know what I always told him?

“I’m so busy. Maybe when things slow down.”

He was always gracious.

“Ok, Travy. I’m so proud of you.”

Any guess where I was when he passed away?

At work.

That’s where I always was.

Punch in. Clock out. Get a check.

But it cost me the last fishing trip with my dad.

Man, what I wouldn’t give to go to Lake Dardanelle, sit beside him and spend the day catching crappie with him one more time.

The day he went to the fishing hole in the sky, I made a vow to make a change.

I was going to start my own business.

This totally seemed logical to me.

What’s the opposite of an active income job?

A business!

Right?

That’s what I thought.

I’ll compress this down into a few paragraphs, but I had years of trial and error.

What I discovered is a business is the last thing you want to start if you want more free time!

LOL.

My buddy Ryan Daniel Moran says, “Yeah, like I want more free time so let’s start a business is like saying, ‘I want more free time, let’s have a kid!’.

You trade one boss for like ten bosses if you are freelancing a service.

Or hundreds or thousands of bosses if you are selling a product.

And then if you’re not careful, employees start to become your bosses too, but you’re paying them!

I’m not saying NOT to go into business.

But I’m just saying business is NOT the answer to passive income.

And I know…

E-Myth and work on the biz not in the biz and stuff.

But… ya know?

I just may be the most impatient SOB on the planet?

…but I didn’t want to give up another 5 or 10 years of my life.

Business (or a side hustle) is NOT the answer to passive income!

For 2 main reasons:

BOG DOWN

BANKRUPTCY

Bankruptcy = Running out of cash

Bog Down = Running out of time and energy

I see this in the “build an agency” and freelancing space a lot.

EVEN IF they got all the leads they wanted for free (and they don’t)…

Give them 5 days or 5 weeks and they’ve got so many bosses…I mean clients…that they get BOGGED DOWN delivering the service OR trying to manage the people delivering the service.

Now, that’s the OPPOSITE of passive income, wouldn’t you say?

On the opposite end of the spectrum…

Let’s take a dude that has a course.

There are lots of course creators out there.

He can sell his course without getting BOGGED DOWN time and energy wise…

BUT…

He generally can’t drive enough leads and make enough sales before he goes BANKRUPT.

Do ya feel me?

This is why most course creators may be making trickles of income, but not enough to put food on the table or a roof over their family’s heads on a regular basis.

Bog down and bankruptcy are 2 persistent azz problemos when it comes to passive income.

And running a business is not the answer because of bog down and bankruptcy.

But this begs the questions:

What CAUSES bog down?

What CAUSES bankruptcy?

Let’s start with bog down.

Bog down is running out of time and energy.

There is ONE MAIN CULPRIT I’ve discovered.

It is CREATING.

Creating the product or delivering the service.

Creating the audience/list/subscriber base.

Creating customers from the above.

Creating takes a heap of energy and time.

Now, let’s talk bankruptcy: running out of cash.

Where do we spend cash?

We spend it on all the things we don’t have the time or energy to do on the list above.

If we pay Facebook for traffic.

If we pay someone to manage the ads for us.

We are trying to compensate for our time and energy by spending cash to get it.

So..

Take a sec.

This is important.

It is BOG DOWN that causes BANKRUPTCY.

In other words…

It is time and energy drains that we try and compensate for by spending cash.

And BOG DOWN is caused by CREATING.

Now, again!

Puuuhlease hear this.

I am not saying NOT to create.

I am not saying NOT to have a business.

I AM saying it’s not the way for the “Average Joe or Jane” to have enough passive income to cover even their basic living expenses.

A business is NOT passive.

At least, not for years, AFTER there are people, processes and systems in place.

And that requires heaps of capital, expertise and a lot of failing most folks can’t handle.

Because it requires TOO MUCH CREATING.

Now, you may be thinking “affiliate marketing”?

Because you don’t have to create the product or service.

And that’s a good start!

BUT…

How many affiliate marketers do you know with truly passive income?

I mean, most of them still must CREATE traffic, leads and/or an audience.

mmmkay?

Creation = Bog Down = Bankruptcy = NOT PASSIVE

So, is it starting to come into focus for you?

If we want passive income…

We don’t want to create traffic.

AND! …

We don’t want to create the product or service.

Is that even possible, Travis?

“Are ya jivin’ me?”

I’m not.

Just like it seemed impossible to put a man on the moon.

It seemed impossible to cook a potato in minutes.

It seemed impossible to put a phone, computer and GPS in the palm of your hand.

It is totally possible to produce VALUE and passive income without CREATING every darn thing yourself.

And when you produce value from what others have already CREATED you don’t get BOG DOWN.

No creation = No Bog Down = No Bankruptcy = PASSIVE INCOME

Traffic = No Energy drain and very often free

Product = No energy drain and can be sourced free or cheap with no bog down

We just put the two together.

I use to call this Piggy-Backing.

Because I’d piggyback off other people’s traffic AND I’d piggyback off other people’s product.

I remember just AFTER I figured out piggybacking…

…that damn alarm clock would go off and I’d get ready for work, but I’d look at the sales that came in overnight and I’d made more money BEFORE going to work than I’d make all day working!

I’d check stats at lunchtime and feel like I won the lottery or something.

I knew then it was only a matter of time before I got to give my boss the middle finger award.

It was exhilarating going to “work” and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

In the Navy, we called the last few months before a transfer “Walking the Dog”.

I “walked the dog” for about a year and a half after I completely figured out piggybacking.

And…

Just before Valentine’s Day 2006, I turned in my notice.

That was 17 years ago.

Today, I’ve taken it to a whole new level.

Today I call it: PIGGY-BANKING!

But…I want to caution you…

PIGGY-BANKING is an UN-BUSINESS.

Your ego must be okay with being different.

People tried to chastise me and told me all the time, “it’s not a “real business”.

Or “You’re not creating anything.”

What they didn’t know was I also wasn’t tied down to anything.

No bosses.

No clients.

No customers.

NO BOGDOWN and plenty of PASSIVE INCOME!

I could knock out a “whole day’s work” in an hour if that.

(And the “trick” wasn’t outsourcing my bogged-down bits.)

…but peer pressure can be a real mother trucker.

I figured out though that I want to SEPARATE out what gives me PASSIVE INCOME and what gives me PURPOSE.

A business is a great tool for purpose and even profit.

But a terrible bedmate for passive income.

NOTE TO SELF: Don’t let peer pressure make you mix the two!

So, with that warning out of the way…

Let me lay out the 3 main ingredients for producing (not creating) passive income through PIGGY-BANKING.

And give you 4 examples…(Plus a Zoom call where you can ask me anything so you can start your first (or next) passive income stream without BOGDOWN)…