Tiny Little Freedom Machines (Part One)

Baby Steps to Financial Independence

BIG!

That’s what the gen pop has been taught they NEED to be financially free. 

Big savings rate.

Big nest egg.

Big assets.

Big business. 

Big exit from a business. 

Big idea. 

Big brains. 

BIG! BIG! BIG!

And the PLAN shoved down their craniums to get BIG? 

BIG SACRIFICE! 

Scrimp and save your money over 40 years. 

Sell your family time to an employer or give every last shred of wheat to your business. 

If you run a business that sucks your soul but is “making money” keep your nose to the grindstone because one day, someday, you’ll have that BIG EXIT! 

That’s the BIG PROMISE! 

Sacrifice BIGLY and you’ll get rewarded BIGLY someday. 

Pinky swear! 

Does it work?

For a few…

Do you know who it didn’t work for?

My brother-in-law, Charlie. 

Good dude. 

Married to my sister for 30+ years. 

20 years in the Navy. 

Then after “retirement” he sweat his ass off as a fire watch at the nuclear plant in town to make ends meet. 

Then, you know what happened?

He got cancer.

Spent years fighting it. 

Sadly…

He died on a cold rainy day last week. 

He was just a few years older than me. 

I don’t mean to be morbid.

But that kinda stuff hits me hard.

It’s why I write to you.

It’s why I write to you today.

Charlie didn’t have a bad life.

He just had a life with very little freedom.

He got used to the “leash” he was on.

Charlie and I had lots of conversations over backyard BBQs.

The short leash was just “the way it is” from his perspective.

Someday his “ship” would come in.

He followed the plan: Sacrifice Bigly

But he passed away before the Big Promise could be fulfilled. 

The “Big C” beat him to the “Big P”. 

Unfortunately, this is a common story. 

Now, I am ALL ABOUT grit, resourcefulness and persistence.  

But resourcefulness and persistence are not the same things as a sacrifice. 

Sacrifice literally means to offer or kill (something) to make whole or holy. 

So, self-sacrifice means to serve yourself up to become holy? 

Makes no sense. 

I’ll pass on the Big Sacrifice Sandwich the Society Deli is trying to cram down everyone’s gullets. 

Q: Who do they want you to sacrifice yourself for? 

A: THEM! or their idea of how society should be. 

I got a problemo with sacrifice to live up to someone else’s ideals. 

Now, do I also have a problemo with BIG?

I do! 

A big ‘un…

I’ve known people who’ve been trying to make it BIG for decades. 

They tell us to dream big…or we’re a loser. 

So, a good dude or dudette thinks the only way to be a winner is to start a billion-dollar company. 

Before they even get started they need huge (big) amounts of capital. 

The bigness of that stops them. 

The bigness of a “to-do” list that is fifty-eleven miles long stops them. 

Next thing ya know…

10, 20 or 30 years of self-sacrifice have passed by. 

The whole time they feel like a “loser”...

When the real problem isn’t them at all.

The real problem is they bought into the plan of BIG… 

What if we flipped that thinking on its head?

What if we didn’t mind being bass ackwards?

What if we thought SMALL? 

Even smaller than small?

Tiny! 

Could tiny possibly work?

It did for me. 

It still wasn’t easy breezy, but it worked. 

Because I was working (self-sacrificing) 70ish hours a week for the point of sale computer company…I had very little time or energy to squeeze in time to break free. 

I didn’t have time to “start a business”. 

But, I figured out by piggybacking on online traffic that already existed…

(I call it Piggy Banking now, if you didn’t see the Truth About Passive Income Mini-Book check it out.)

…selling stuff I didn’t have to deliver…

And doing it in a way where the traffic kept coming in without me needing to “manage it”...

I could start TINY! 

I remember my first little income stream was $200 to $300 a month. 

Then I set up another one for a few hundred a month. 

Because it was TINY, I could do it. 

No employees. 

No trying to take sales calls on lunch break. 

I could set these up in the tiny amount of time I had. 

It required almost NONE of my energy once I piggy-banked off the traffic. 

This was super exciting to me. 

It was “self-motivating” instead of self-sacrificing. 

I thought of these as Tiny Little Freedom Machines. 

After I set up about half a dozen TLFMs…

I got pretty good at it. 

I started setting up TLFMs that were doing $100 to $200 a day. 

I was barely making $200 a day driving all over Arkansas and fixing restaurant computers for 10 - 12+ hours a day.

I became a man on FIRE! 

This was my way OUT!

Every TLFM I set up brought me closer to freedom. 

I finally could see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

What was funny is most other folks in the internet marketing space were shooting for $10,000 months at the time. 

I’m like, “…shucks if I can just have a $100 a month come in with NONE of my blood, sweat and tears being an input to the money machine after it’s set up…I’m dandy with that.”

Then I can just set up another one.  

BTW: some of the SAME people trying to get to $10,000 a month…are still trying on the same treadmill they were on in 2005. 

For me, TINY beat BIG! 

Tiny was also SCALABLE. 

Tiny IS the path to big, actually. 

I think it’s so easy for folks to forget why they want the money to begin with…

Freedom! 

Now, I’m just a dude from Arkansas. 

But I know that if I want to bake a sweet cake…

I’ve got to put the sugar in BEFORE I bake it. 

Freedom is the same way.

Whatever your plan is…

It’s tough as nailing Jello to a tree to try and put freedom in AFTER you create the business. 

You’ve got to put freedom in BEFORE you create it. 

I had a biz owner reach out to me the other day and say, “Because I am a biz owner, I’m not into this passive income stuff.”

LOL…

Dude totally misses the point. 

If you’re a business owner already and you don’t have all the free time you want…it’s likely because you didn’t put FREEDOM in the recipe before you started baking your biz cake. 

A stressed-out biz owner with cash flow probs (which this guy is) needs to bolt on some tiny little freedom machines in their biz ASAP because life doesn’t last forever. 

And while I hope that “big exit” dream boat comes in for them, hope is a terrible plan! 

For every business owner that has a big exit, there are 1000 more who don’t. 

I don’t want to sacrifice my life for a possibility of a pile of loot later. 

No, I want my freedom NOW! 

Call me impatient if you want. 

But…

I don’t know how much time I’ve got left! 

In 2023, there’s never been a better time to create Tiny Little Freedom Machines than right now. 

There are a number of Sinners here already putting TLFMs together. 

They’re tiny at first. 

But tiny is doable for most folks. 

Big is a muther trucker. 

I don’t know about you, but I learned to ride a tricycle, then a bicycle…

Mom didn’t throw my diapered butt on a Harley to start. 

I want to mention one more time…

That I don’t care how “big” your business is…

If you don’t have any freedom…

If you’re taking home less profit than a dude(tte) with a few dozen Tiny Little Freedom Machines working 24/7/365 for them. 

Maybe TINY is worth considering to bolt onto your “big” business? 

Where do we go from here?

Well, there are already 2 mini-books and other articles in the Sinner Library you can check out.  

Folks are already setting up TLFMs. 

But would you like me to write a PART 2 to this article? 

If so…

And you dig what I’m putting out…

If you think this would help someone you know…

Give this a share. 

If we get 100 shares, I’ll do part 2 for all subscribers. 

If not, I’ll just roll out a part 2 for folks who’ve become Sinner Supporters and have upgraded. 

My first online TLFM’s were super simple…

One was just a 3-page tutorial…

That 3-page tutorial kicked off SEVERAL TLFM’s…

They all started TINY. 

But one grew to $2,000 a month. 

Another grew to $11,000 a month and paid me for 5 years…

I never needed an employee. 

Because of all the social media…this is even easier to do today. 

If there’s enough interest and 100 shares…

I’m thrilled to put out part 2 for you and I’ll share more on that 3-page tutorial.  

But the moral of this “story” is: If the Sacrifice Bigly Plan isn’t panning out as promised, try the TINY plan! 

Rooting For Ya,
Travis

PS Next Zoom shindig is March 15th for all Paid Sinners (Set In 6 ers). TOPIC: Multiple Paydays by Ethically Bundling Books and other stuff you didn’t write. Upgrade to Paid (It’s cheap) and join us!