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Do you ever wish you could just… magically make money? (Don’t we all.)

And if you believe what’s out there about the concept of passive income… you might think it’s doable for you.

In this quick episode, we’re going to talk about what passive income REALLY is… and what you should be focused on instead.

Looking to create some leveraged income of your own? Let's talk about it!

Alyson Lex 0:03
You see it all the time, do this once make money forever, make money while you're sitting on a beach sipping a Mai Tai under an umbrella reading the book, and make money while you sleep. The passive income dream that we are sold as business owners, and course creators and coaches and experts. And whatever we identify as in our business. This is what the dream is. I'm just going to have people pay me, and I don't have to do anything. And what Jenny and I really want to do is break down what that really looks like, on the back end. We've done this before with a couple of other things that were promised. And we have sworn to make this episode not as ranty as it probably could be. I'm going to struggle. We're both going to struggle, but we're going to try really hard.

Jennie Wright 0:57
Okay. So let's just keep it top-level. All right. It's really hard. I'm really unreal. It's really hard. It's hard already.

Alyson Lex 1:04
It's hard. I can tell. I can tell I can see it. I'm struggling. So let's start by redefining passive income. What's a better word? Leveraged, leveraged? Well, that, yeah, that is a better word.

Jennie Wright 1:20
Yeah, it's not passive income, the thought is passive income is it's money for nothing, I sit there, I do nothing, I get money. Whereas it's actually more of a leveraged thing. So passive income is actually very much leveraged income. The only true passive income you could ever earn is if you bought shares of Apple back in the day, or Microsoft back in the day, and you're just earning dividends on those stocks, that's passive income, you're doing nothing to earn it now. That's my definition of passive income. Everything else is leveraging your marketing, leveraging your list, leveraging your contacts, leveraging OPA other people's lists, leveraging all of it. And that's how you can obtain this quote, unquote,

Alyson Lex 2:06
passive income. I really like the leverage things. So when we talk about leveraging something, we mean, make it once and profit from it multiple times,

Jennie Wright 2:22
put in the effort to make it understand that there's work putting into it, and you're sort of like front loading. So you're either spending money upfront, to build it to have somebody else build it for you to do something for the marketing and things like that. And then once it's done, it's done. You've put the time in, and then all you're doing is being able to leverage that product over and over and over for whatever period of time

Alyson Lex 2:54
so. The thing is, when you're going to do this, there's still stuff to be done. I like the way that you said front load. Okay, so your front loading the effort, but there's still effort that has to come into it after the fact. Right? Let's pretend that you've already spent the time to develop it weeks, months, whatever. It's already been produced. Let's pretend it's already been produced. You've got the sales page, you've got the funnel, you've got the email marketing, you've got it actually created, you have it in the the learning management system, your Thinkific, or whatever, to deliver it, you have all of the stuff. Now what and as much as I would love to say that, you can create it and people are going to magically buy it. That's just not how the world works. So you have to now do the work. To sell it. It's not passive because the work comes into selling in the hustle in the promotion.

Jennie Wright 4:33
Marketing is the key here. The marketing is the kicker the marketing is the thing. It doesn't matter what you've put into it in terms of time or effort or building out the product. Or if let's just say if we go to somebody else's product, let's just say I'm selling Alison's widgets, her online widgets. I still have to mark it. I still have to talk about it. I still have to Even in some cases, like for the people who sell, if you guys have ever seen like, Marie Forleo is B School, you'll see every time every year, everybody goes bananas over this thing. And part of it is people build out their own little bundles, like buy B school and you get Allison's bundle by B School from Jenny, you get Jenny's bundle and things like that. So you still have to build those things, to help boost your affiliate sales if you're doing affiliate sales. So affiliate marketing isn't just and passive marketing or passive income is not just taking some of these link and putting it on the bio on your Instagram and then hoping everybody comes right. So there's still a lot of

Alyson Lex 5:41
active marketing versus passive marketing. And let's look at the other side of that. Let's look at what Marie has to do. Not even accounting for the delivery of preschool, because it's a group coaching program. So there's delivery involved. She's got to find the affiliate, she's got to sign them up, she got to manage them, she's got to make sure that they have all the assets that they need. She's got to encourage them and gamify and pay them and

Jennie Wright 6:13
do that. And right, like,

Alyson Lex 6:16
all of that stuff still has to happen. For someone else to sell her thing. I was just looking at this. Gosh, yesterday, I've started to like, Oh, I wonder if I could hop on one of these affiliate networks and find some people to sell my stuff. I literally was just looking at this yesterday when I was supposed to be writing and there's work involved. I can't just be like, here's my thing. Go by, I have to provide assets, I have to provide copy and information and details to these people. It's not just and then the network takes like 30% And then I have to pay the affiliate. So it's very expensive to go that route. And you know, let's say you have a $500 product. Okay, yeah, maybe that's worth it for you because you don't have to do anything to deliver it. But if you have a $2,000 coaching program, is it going to be worth paying 80%? And then you have to still go and deliver it.

Jennie Wright 7:22
Do you notice how we're still ranting even though we said we weren't going to?

Alyson Lex 7:26
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I get so passionate about this, because it's such a misconception. That is okay. So, but the thing is leveraging of that word is not a bad thing. Yeah, I encourage it. But let's not call it passive anymore. Yeah. If if you want to spend more time creating and marketing and engaging with your audience and building and growing and hosting webinars and creating content and recording YouTube videos and helping in clubhouse firms, if that's what gets you jazzed leveraging is a great thing. If you want to do that more than in the doing in the delivering. I could say I'm going to make the ultimate learn how to write copy course and not write copy anymore. A lot of copywriters do that. And then I get to spend all my time building and promoting and videoing and talking and not that I don't do that anyway. But instead of the writing copy for my clients, but I'm still spending time it's not sitting on a beach sipping my tires. As much as I wish that

Jennie Wright 8:42
was the case. I'd rather be skiing. Let's just Yeah.

Alyson Lex 8:45
Oh, give me an umbrella. Good book. And a fruity drink. fresh powder

Jennie Wright 8:51
and a hot chocolate at the end of the day. I'm good. We're so different that way. Like We're so alike in so many ways, but we're so different from that one thing.

Alyson Lex 9:01
I feel like if we're not exactly the same, we're exactly the opposite. Yep. It's not like you're like yeah, I'd rather go to the beach but put me on a raft or like No, take me away from the sun. And put me in the snow.

Jennie Wright 9:15
There still son it's just not hot.

Alyson Lex 9:19
It's cold and windy. I don't cold wind. No thank you. We had this conversation last weekend and I we do not we are not friends wind and

Jennie Wright 9:29
I are not like weather. And and this is a total aside but I literally went skiing and this is Canadian temperatures. Okay. I went skiing in minus 26 degrees Celsius. So it was with the windchill that was minus 26 degrees Celsius. The only thing that was exposed was literally aligned just underneath my eyes and I got frostbite between where my mask was, and where my balaclava was I got this little line of frostbite it looked like I had like half moons under my eye, but it was still worth it. It was the best time Okay, back to the episode.

Alyson Lex 10:01
No, no, no, we're gonna we're gonna, why not? We're already there. So I remember distinctly, I must have been probably a middle teenager. So I was like 1516 years old. And it was snowing here in Baltimore, which a lot of snow for us, which is probably like, you know, whatever, in Canada, but there was probably about a foot and a half of snow on the ground. And I needed to get something out of the neighbor's back shed. And I know that's really weird. But the townhouses we shared a lot, we were really good friends with them. And it was the it was the snow shovels, because clearly planning ahead was not something that grownups did. And so I had to go out my back door, through my backyard, the gate connected my neighbor's backyard, and my backyard, so I had to go through the gate to their shed and back. Okay, it was like 50 feet. And I distinctly remember that feeling like the longest expect because it was windy and it was cold, and the gate wouldn't open because the snow in the eye and part pass, dude, like if I'm going to go skiing, I'm sitting in a lot drinking hot cocoa reading a book to get as close to that beach experience as I can. And thank you for sharing. You're welcome. Thank you for sharing about your frostbite moons.

Jennie Wright 11:27
Okay, and back to the episode, and we're back. So yeah.

Alyson Lex 11:33
But when you leverage your income, you get to go on vacations, sure, you get to take time off. Because you're focused on the deliver, you get to figure out what works best for you. That's the point. That's how I'm going to pretend to pull this together.

Jennie Wright 11:50
Thank you, Alyson, for being the copywriter that you are in pulling us back. much appreciate it. All right. quick down and dirty episode about the hoax, which is passive income, it is actually leveraged income. So go ahead, if you want to go that route, go for it. Just make sure you know, what's your what's gonna be in it, and how you actually have to do it to make it work. And stop looking at things in terms of passive means no work. It just means upfront, front loading of the work so that you reap the rewards later. That's all it is.

Unknown Speaker 12:25
Simple. All right.

Jennie Wright 12:27
Get back to the rest of your days. Enjoy the rest of your, whatever it is. And, you know, hey, if you want to go skiing, plan your skiing, talk to me about it. If you want to go to a beach, talk to Alyson that's where we really differ and make sure you're following the podcast wherever it is that you're listening to podcast episode system to thrive.com is where you want to go first, and then you can go off into different places from there. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to y'all soon. Take care