by: AskPat 695 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 695 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.
All right, now here's today's question from Mark.
Mark: Hi Pat, my name is Mark Warner. I run the Texas Hold 'em Poker Training Blog called ExceptionalPoker.com. My ultimate goal with a blog is to write some how-to and advice books from the content I'm creating on the blog. Based on your advice I'm building my email list, I'm creating useful content on a regular basis, putting out a regularly weekly newsletter with bonus tips, and so on. I'm also writing the first book. I really like the idea of passive income generated from ebooks, but I question just how passive this will ever be for me. I'll have to continue blogging, writing the newsletter, and promoting the books.
You're the king of passive income, but I think you're more active than pretty much anyone else I know. You're anything but passive. When does the quote on quote, “Passive,” part kick in for someone like you, or does it ever? Do you just keep on working as hard as ever until you drop, or is there a point when you back way off? Or is there some happy middle ground? I love writing the blog and newsletters, but eventually would like to dial some of the effort back, let the future E-books produce true passive income, and then begin some other venture or niche blog in parallel with the poker blog. What are your thoughts about continuously working actively for passive income? I don't mind hard work, but it seems that passive income is anything but. Thanks. Like pretty much anyone else who sends you a question here, I'll sign off by saying I really, really love the work you do. You've completely inspired me to move forward with my own dreams. Please keep up the active slash passive work.
Pat Flynn: Hey Mark, thanks so much for the question. I appreciate this, because a lot of people actually have the same question. When I see people in person they say the exact same thing that you did Mark. They say, “Pat, you're one of the busiest guys I know. How is this passive at all?” Well first of all let me just say that nothing is very 100% passive, that's a big myth when it comes to passive income. That's sort of why I came into this realm, and used passive income as sort of the, I don't know, central focus of my brand because I just really wanted to be that person that was there to tell people, “Hey, passive income, it exists. But it's not ever 100% going to be like that.”
With anything where you are putting money into stocks, or investments of any kind, real estate, you're still going to have to be active to keep control on those things, to manage those things, and it's not trade time for money type of active, but it's still active in that sense. The passive part comes when you can invest your time up front, set it, and let it be for a little bit, just manage it every once in awhile, coming back to it, improving it. And then having it build on itself. That's what passive income has done for me.
It's not the trading time for money anymore, it's investing time up front, and being able to reap the rewards after that. Now, I do work a lot, and a lot of the work I do, do is for work that is going to generate more passive income in the future. However, there's all kind of passive income I can share now, that I've been able to generate without having to do much work, just mainly upkeep like I was talking about earlier.
GreenExamAcademy.com, I haven't really updated that site with new information, because there's only a finite amount of information on that website. That was a site that I created back in 2008, and it still continues month over month, to generate an income for me. SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, FoodTruckr.com, those are other niche related type sites that some of them have more content coming, but I don't produce the content anymore. I have other people producing the content. Mark, as you continue to grow your brand, you're doing it right. You're putting in the work up front now, you're building that authority, you're even writing books which is fantastic.
You could get to a point where you hire writers, or find team members to actually keep that part of it going, and then you can actually do the bigger thinking type things, or branch out into something else. I know a lot of people who do things like that. You could have products that are for sell, your book for example. Again, you'll have to maintain it making sure the content is up to date, but you don't have to do that everyday. That's every X number of months, or X number of years. The cool thing about E-books, is it's fairly easy to update. You don't need to reprint a whole number of them, and then distribute them. Then everybody who has an old copy just has the old version, they can just upgrade to the new version on Amazon if they were to re-download it for example.
A lot of the links that are in my old podcast episodes, and old blog posts, those are there passively generating an income from people who discover those posts, and podcasts through search engines like iTunes, and Google, or just through natural searching through my website, and clicking on links here and there. They end up on those pages where there are affiliate links. I'm not actively there saying, “Hey, here's an affiliate link.” But my content that I wrote way back when, is doing that for me.
Now in the grand scheme of things, the passive part works like this for me in my life. It is I work hard, and I take time off. I take that time off because I have that time to take off. I have the flexibility and freedom in my life to be able to do that. That's the passive part of it, that's what true passive income is for me in my definition, in the space of online business, is being able to create these businesses that can run on their own, and yes, you don't ever let them go on forever. You have to maintain them, like I said earlier. But, many times you're able to put in the hard work and then walk away from it, and it can still continue to run.
When you think of an online business it's a store that's online 24/7. It's a piece of information, or pieces of information that are there online, 24/7, 365 days a year. To be able to deliver that content, to be able to share your offers, to show those recommendations that you have for things. To sell your books. Yes, it's going to be very hands on, but I would think about it in terms of investing that time now hands on up front, so that you can have that flexibility and freedom later.
Don't ever walk away from it for good, but you or somebody else could find systems. Excuse me, you could find other people or systems to make those things happen without actually you having to do them anymore, and you'd be able to take time off every once in awhile, “mini-retirements,” as Tim Ferris calls it in The Four Hour Work Week, I think. That was, it's on a similar level as Tim Ferris and The Four Hour Work Week, right? He does not work a four hour work week, but it's just the idea that you could by setting it all up, and getting outsourcing all done correctly, all these systems, and automation, and tools, and software that can help you do that.
Yeah, I hope that answers your questions and shows you where I'm coming from. I'm definitely a hard worker, and I won't let things sit for too long. But I can say that I'm more than happy to have that time and flexibility to go with my wife to take my kids to school, and bring them back home. Or if we just feel like heading over to Disneyland this weekend, actually which we're going to do next weekend cause my wife has a race. We're headed up there on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, just because we have that time. I can choose to do that. Then when I come back on Monday, I'm going to work hard, because there are more things to do, and other projects to complete.
Mark, thank you so much for your question, appreciate it. Want to send you an AskPat T-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. We'll send that to you in the next couple of weeks or so. My assistant will reach out to you to collect your information for that.
For those of you who have a question that you would like potentially featured here on the show, all you have to do, just like Mark. Head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there. All right, now here's a quote to finish off the day, very relevant. This is from Sumendra Singh. Here's the quote, “The hustle will never end.” Now let's talk about this really quick. This word hustle, a lot of people hear it and they're like, “I gotta work til I fall.” You just do everything you can until you don't have any more energy, like you hinted at earlier Mark, during your question.
That's not what I feel like hustle is. We see hustle in people like Gary Vaynerchuk, and other people. You guys see me hustle all the time. Hustle to me isn't work your butt off until you don't have anymore ability to do anymore work. For me, hustle is doing whatever it takes to do what you love. That's truly what the meaning is to me. For Gary Vaynerchuk, he loves work. He's absolutely obsessed with work. He will admit that, and he knows that. Therefore he spends all his time doing it.
For me, I hustle, and I work really hard to do what I love, which is the work I do for SPI, and you guys hear on AskPat, and this podcast, and all those kinds of things. But I hustle as a father too, and I hustle as a husband. I balance those as much as I can. Whatever it is that you love, hustle for that. Don't just hustle to hustle, okay? Don't just work to work, work for purpose, to do what you love. All right guys? Cheers, I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
