by: AskPat 333 Transcript
Pat Flynn: What up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 333, 3-3-3. Three's actually my lucky number, and so this is a super lucky episode.
Awesome, now here's today's question from Emmanuel.
Emmanuel: Hi Pat, my name is Emmanuel. I'm from Costa Rica, and I am a graphic designer. It would be awesome if you can give me some tips on how to create a passive income as a graphic designer because my work is fully active, and I depend on my effort and time to make money on my business. I'm starting a blog about personal branding to offer my service as a brand development. I want to hear your advice on how to implement my skills and generate a passive income. Thank you so much for all, Pat. You are my business inspiration. Thank you.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Emmanuel. Thank you so much for the question today. I appreciate all the support and I'm going to do what I can to support you and everybody else out there. Now, I would highly recommend first and foremost listening to the latest episode of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session158, it's an interview with a guy named Brian Castle who talks about productizing your service. He used to be a freelancer, just like you, doing design work and things like that. And he's been able to productize his service, meaning instead of working individually with clients, and you know how that back and forth can go just a really long time and you get nothing done and that's your time. Instead of saying, “Here, let's work together and figure out what you want,” you instead say, “Here, here's what I provide. Here's what I can give you. If you purchase this, I'll give you this.” He has a website, for example, called Restaurant Engine where people could pay X amount of dollars and then restaurants, typically, because that's who he's targeting, will get a website and a number of other things related to their particular branding, and they get that and they know what to expect. It cuts out a lot of the back and forth. People know what to expect. There's a set price, so you can get an idea of how many clients, for example, you have to have every month to break even or do whatever you need to do. That's a great way to go about it. Taking a specialty that you have, so design work, sure, niche it down and perhaps get into some sort of productized service.
Again, I highly, highly, Emmanuel, for everybody else out there working with clients and doing freelance work, listen to that episode, SmartPassiveIncome.com/session158. It could literally change your life. I'm not going to get into the super concrete details of how that works. Brian gives a good example on how to do that in that particular episode. Something that goes along with what Brian talked about and something that you can explore as well, not necessarily a productized service, but something that would actually take you out of the business a little bit more, and that is hiring a team or hiring other people to do parts of what you already do. There's a lot of thinking that goes along with that, but when you think about it, if you fast forward to a perfect situation, I have a client who wants to do something and you have other people take care of that for you. That is passive because you are not working on it, but somebody else is for you. Obviously you'll have to pay people to do that and hire a team, so this may not be the best thing for somebody who's just bootstrapping, but when you think about it, it's a great way to build passive income.
Passive income is you not having to trade your time for money. Perhaps that time is somebody else, another human being, just not your own. That's also something you could think about. When you're building a productized service, for example, one of those things that you can have people do when you have that “product” that you're selling, that somebody's purchasing, again, parts of that can be done by other people as well. It's really important to, when you're doing your design process, to actually write down all of the different bits and pieces of what it takes to work with a particular client. You'll actually see that if you are very detailed with, okay, here's what happens, the client emails me and then I email back the client, then we get on a call together, a lot of those things, scheduling a call . . . A lot of those things could actually be done by somebody else. Again, taking yourself out of the business as much as possible and just seeing where exactly you have to be. If you don't have to be it, you don't have to do it. Again, that's the thing, hiring a team.
Now another way a graphic designer might be able to make passive income is through affiliate marketing. Perhaps you are the one providing design services and branding services to a company, but you might have some suggestions for other things that can help that company out related to that, for example, website hosting or maybe having a website, get an email service provider. Maybe it's AWeber for example, and they don't have in the discussions with branding and what a good website you is, you could have them go through your affiliate link to set up an email service provider so that then you get a commission, they get to collect emails, everybody's happy. Again, stuff related to what you do. I mean, there's all kinds of things related to websites and branding that you probably need done. Maybe you partner with LegalZoom.com, which I know sponsors a few different podcasts out there and have people who are doing branding go to copyright and trademark their stuff. That's another thing you could do.
Again, thinking outside the lines on services that other people can provide that you could potentially earn a commission from based off of the genre that you are getting into. Depending on the niche that you specialize in, for example, you might even have other things. For instance, if you are maybe you are specializing in designing app logos for people doing iPhone applications, well, then you could potentially create other relationships with people who do app marketing. Then, once people get the branding and stuff for their own application, you can forward those leads to other people who can do the marketing for them, and they might pay you per lead or something like that or maybe give you a commission based off of the package price that they sell them. Again, thinking outside the box and thinking of what else your particular target audience could buy, and how you might be able to partner with another company that can serve them and actually take what you do and take it to wherever they end up needing to go with it.
Emmanuel, I hope that answers your question, at least gives you something to think about. Again, I highly recommend listening to the latest podcast that I have out, or at least at the time of this recording, Episode 158. Again, go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session158. Productizing your service, creating a package that people buy when they know what they're going to get and that you have specific deliverables that are already known. It just makes everybody's life so much easier, and especially your own. It cuts out a lot of that client work. It makes it very clear on what people can expect to get from you. Again, that is passive income, especially if you have that team working for you to create that thing for whoever purchases it.
Again, thank you Emmanuel for the question. An AskPat t-shirt will be headed and flying over to Costa Rica to you. Hope to get a picture of you wearing it at some point in the future. That would be awesome. Just use the handle @PatFlynn on Twitter so I can see it, or send it to me via email. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page thanks to the widget from Speakpipe.com, which is awesome.
Thanks so much, and as always, I like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from baseball legend himself, Babe Ruth. He says, the Great Bambino, he says, “You just can't beat the person who never gives up.”
Love it. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.