Forget passive income and focus on this instead

You’ve heard of “passive” income, right? That’s where you set things up so that your business earns extra income with minimal additional effort from you.

Well, passive income can come from many different places, and sometimes it’s not where you’d expect!

In fact, I recently had what must be the ultimate passive income experience.

A company I’d worked with in the past emailed me out of the blue asking for my PayPal email so they could “send me my referral bonus”.

The thing is though, I had no idea what they were talking about!

Turns out, someone I’d sent their way had signed up for their bookkeeping services and mentioned that I’d made the recommendation.

Imagine that! Getting paid a healthy commission (several hundred dollars) for casually recommending a company you didn’t even know paid commissions. :-)

Of course, referrals are just one way of adding passive income to your business. You can recommend services you trust, like I did, or products you use like software or online courses.

Alternatively, you can create your own digital products, which is one of my favourite methods. By packaging up your knowledge and delivering it online you can stop trading your time for money and create a more scalable business model.

In my view though, people fixate too much on this idea of passive income. At least, they focus on it too soon.

Yes, “making money while you sleep” is very alluring, but in reality it won’t happen right away. You need a few things in place first, like an audience that knows, likes and trusts you.

So instead of passive income, I encourage you to think about something else first…

Passive value.

That’s where you create assets that keep working for you after they’ve been made, and continue to add value to your business (even if that value isn’t always financial.)

Here are some examples:

An in-depth blog post on a topic that interests your potential customers and helps new people find you online

A handy checklist or cheat sheet that attracts the right people onto your email list

A simple quiz that give prospects clarity on a problem they’re struggling with and points them to the next step on their journey

A free video course that educates prospects and introduces them to your unique way of thinking

None of these will pay you directly, but you can create them once and then reap the value day after day. And they’ll help you build the audience you need to make some real passive income down the line.

So here’s the takeaway…

If you’re looking to move your business away from just trading time for money, forget about passive income (for now) and start thinking about passive value.

Ask yourself: what could you create today that would generate value for your business for weeks, months or even years into the future?

Once you’ve done that, and if you feel like it, why not drop me a line with any ideas you’ve had?

See you soon,

Glen

P.S. By the way, this email is an example of a sow-once-reap-many asset I can use again and again. I’m sending it to you now, but I’ll also add it to the sequence of emails that automatically get sent to new subscribers who find me online and choose to join my email list.