This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Our caller today is looking for something that you might want to. That's right, I'm talking to you, our listener. Thanks for being out there. Listen, I don't like to generalize because, you know, what you want might be different than somebody else wants, but in this case, what our caller is looking for is passive income. Okay, so yeah, I guess since you're listening to Side Hustle School, I am guessing that you might appreciate more of that as well, passive income is nice because crazy thing about how it works is it arrives passively.
You don't have to do anything for it, or at least you have to do very little for it once it's set up. Now, our listener's question here, it's actually also a success story. I love these because his Cytosles, since being part of this community, are bringing in more than $50,000 a year. Can't complain about that. As I said, I love hearing these reports.
Love to get one like that from you as well. But still, as Roger says, he wants more of this income to be passive because he's doing a lot of work for it. And I understand that as well. So how can he, and perhaps some of our listeners, go to the next level? That's what we're talking about in this episode.
Stay tuned, that detailed question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Roger. I've been listening since the beginning and I'm happy to report that I've taken real action. I've lost count of the number of Cytosles I started and walked away from, but the good news is I've stuck with three of them. All told, they've increased my income more than $50,000 a year, which has allowed me to prepay much of my mortgage, take vacations and worry less about losing my job.
So thank you for that. You might be wondering what the problem is. Well, all these projects take a lot of work. Not just the brainstorming or setup work, but actual operations. In fact, now that I've been doing this a while, I realize that's what I really need.
So what do I do to go from working hard and making extra money to working less hard, but still making extra money? I'm ready to go to the next level. So don't be afraid to give me a homework assignment. [Music]
Roger. So first and foremost, congratulations.
I mean, you have increased your income more than $50,000 a year. It's allowed you to prepay your mortgage, take some vacations, lots of good stuff there. So congratulations, you did all the work. All right, and now I agree with this goal of going to the next level, right? Because just because something has gone well, like we can celebrate that, but we can also say, how can we improve it?
How can we get closer to that goal of not just working harder, but working smarter? So let's separate these answers a bit. This is something you built into your next project, I'm going to suggest. In terms of transitioning from an existing project, that's a little different because you need to conduct an audit, you need to look at where the revenue comes from, what you need to do to receive that revenue, and then consider if there are ways to do less or outsource. But for Roger or anybody else out there who's designing a new project from the outset, you try to build with that mindset in mind.
Like you just make that one of your design principles. You want to make a product or a service that's helpful. You want to make something that has relatively high margin. It's much easier to profit with something that's selling for a good price than something that's more like a commodity. So these are a few different design principles, and you want one of them here to be, I want to build this with passive income in mind.
So your goal is to reduce the touch points that are required, the more automated the better. You know, it's one thing to go to bed and wake up the next morning to payment notifications from money that has arrived overnight. That's great, I mean, that's awesome. That's what I want all of our listeners to get to. But that is also step one, where Roger is now.
So step two is, can you go to bed and wake up to see new money that's arrived that doesn't require work from you? I kind of paused there a little bit, so I was going to say doesn't require any work from you, but I tend to think if it's a little bit of work, that's okay, right? Because that's still pretty cool to have money coming in and not a whole lot you have to do for it. So that's the real goal. I noticed that you can still provide a great service or sell a very helpful product.
Like you're not trying to cut corners on quality for your customer, you're just trying to make your life better. Like ultimately they have to value it to pay for it, right? So, you know, again, we're not trying to make something that's cheap, we're trying to make something that's good and helpful, but less work for you. So Roger, great job again getting this far. My challenge for you is to take what you've learned and apply it to your passive income goal for next year.
So I hope in your next report, you know, as you build new projects from the ground up, you can say not only are you earning a good amount of money, but you've also improved your quality of life as well. I am cheering you on, Roger, and all of our listeners out there. I hope you're doing okay in this holiday season. Let's get to work on making some fun stuff, okay? I look forward to hearing your reports if you've got questions or feedback.
sidehustleschool.com/questions, and of course, you can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. It's all completely free. We've got a new episode every single day. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
