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Multiple Streams – Audio

Hi, I’m AJ and welcome to this month’s VIP lesson. We’re going to talk about Financial Freedom and one strategy to attain it, to get it.

First, what do I mean by financial freedom?

It’s the freedom to live your life without financial stress, without money stress. So, when you have financial freedom, you’re not always worried and stressed about money. Also, it means that you have financial safety, so if you lose your job you’re still okay. If you lost your pension, if you’re retired, you still would be okay. You could still live. You would still have enough income to survive and have a good life.

Financial freedom we all want it, but it’s not easy right, if it was easy we all would be financially free right now. But, most people are very dependent on just their one job or one source of income and that can be very, very stressful. Now, when you have financial freedom, one of the great things is you have more choices, more opportunities, you can choose to do things for enjoyment, rather than simply because you need the money.

You can choose to do work that you enjoy, rather than only work that pays you or that pays you a certain amount of money. Also, you have more time freedom. When you are financially free you can take a break, you can take a long break, you can just stop working for a whole year if you want to, and go on a round the world trip, for example. Or focus only on learning English for one full year, don’t even worry about working.

Sounds great, but how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you attain? How do you get this kind of financial freedom in your life? Well, there are many different ways, many different strategies. Two of the most common are, number one…

To build a successful business

Build a successful business, a fairly big successful business right. So you build one successful business. It makes you a lot of money. You are the boss so you’re free, you can do what you want and you kind of get rich. You get wealthy from this one business. That’s a great way to attain financial freedom. For sure, building a successful business is a fantastic way to get financial freedom; however, it’s difficult. It’s not easy to build, you know, when I say big I mean big enough to give you financial freedom for your whole life. So you don’t have to build a company like Apple, you can build a small company, but it still has to be big enough to make a very good income.

This is not easy, it takes a lot of work. I’ve done this myself and it takes a lot of work. For 10 years almost, I just focused almost only on Effortless English and I worked many, many, many, many, many hours, more than 8 hours a day. I was always thinking about the business; working, working, working. So it takes a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of effort. It can take a lot of time, depending on different factors, different situations. And honestly, I have found in life that most people, most people are not ready to build their own business, because it’s so risky. There’s a lot of risk when you build your own business. There’s a very good chance you will fail and if you don’t fail it’s always in your mind that it could fail.

Also, when you have a business your income is not steady. One month might be high. The next month might be low. For most people, I have learned, it’s too stressful, too risky. So, what’s another option, you still want financial freedom? Well, we’re talking about it this month, multiple streams of income , multiple streams of income.

This is a strategy, I think, is better for most people. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re the kind of person who is very self-motivated, very self-disciplined who hates working for other people, who wants to be an entrepreneur, a business owner, you know. You will know if you have that personality. Great, go build a business. But most people actually don’t. Some people think they do but then they find out really it’s not for them and for most regular people, most people, I think, the second strategy is better…

To build multiple small streams of income

A stream is like a small river, so it means there’s constantly water moving. Well, if we think of streams of income it means it’s something that gives you income. It means there’s cash, there’s money constantly coming in, every month some money’s coming in. With a very successful business it’s a big one, it’s like a river of cash, a river of money coming in; one big one. But, for multiple streams of income it’s lots of little ones that add up to something bigger.

So let’s talk about how to do this and what the benefits are. Some of the benefits of doing the multiple streams of income strategy, number one, it’s easier for most people to do, because one, each little stream, each little income can be quite small.

You know, maybe just $500 a month, so you don’t need to build this fairly big, successful business you can build something little and then you build something else, little and then something else, you’ve got several little streams of income but eventually they add up to enough for you to have financial freedom. This is easier for most people. Also, because you’re building only little tiny streams of income you can do it part-time while you continue working your job.

To build a real business you have to quit your job, you really do, you gotta do it. You know you can kind of start a business part-time while working a job, but if you really want a successful business you have to take the big risk and quit your job and 100% you commit to that business. That’s scary for a lot of people and it’s a big risk. However, if you’re just building some little tiny small part-time income on the side, you can do that with a full-time job. You can have your full- time job and then in the evenings and on the weekends you can build up a little small income source.

So it’s much easier to do and you can do it part-time. It’s less risky, because you can continue working your normal job, so you have that security, which is very important for most people. Now, it is a little bit slower, this method. It can be slower, but it’s much, much safer and you can do it part-time. Let’s talk about how do you do it? Let’s talk about some key points for building multiple streams of income, and some of the additional benefits of doing this.

Number one is diversity, diversity. If you know anything about investment you’ll know that diversifying or diversity super important. Diversity means many different kinds, not everything the same. If you have one business or you just have your one job that’s not diversity right it’s only one. That’s more risky. If you lose that job all your income is gone, 100% is gone. Even if you retired you have a pension but it’s from one source it’s from the government or it’s from a company. Again, that’s only one source that’s more risky, what if they cut it? What if they reduce it? Pensions go bankrupt sometimes, it’s risky it’s not diversity, but when you have many different streams, even though they’re all small it’s much safer because if one fails you still have the other ones you don’t go to zero, your income doesn’t drop to zero.

So diversity of type means you want different types of income. This is important when you build your little small streams of income, your little sources of income. You want them to be different types of income. For example, myself as an example, I have an online business as you know. You’re a member of my online business. Now, if I want to have a second income stream I could start another online business and then another one and then another one and then another one. Is that a good idea? Eh, I think no, not really because it’s not diverse enough they’re all the same type of income– online, online, online.

What if Google makes a huge change, which they often do, and all the businesses could drop because of Google? I can’t control Google, so it’s more risky to have all these different incomes but they’re all the same type, all online. Or some people do real estate, they maybe buy a house and rent it out to people and then they buy another house and rent it out. That’s okay if you want to focus on being a real estate business person, but if you want the multiple income strategy, which is safer, then what you wanna do is you wanna have maybe one rental income, one apartment, one little house you could rent out, but then the next income stream, the next type of income should be something very different, not real estate at all.

Because again, what if the real estate market crashes? What if your city, town or country changes the rental laws? These things could happen. If all your income is this one type, just real estate, then that means your whole income could crash. But if only one is and then you have something else like online, and rental and something else and something else, they’re all quite different, then if one drops the others usually are okay. It’s more safe, so the small income streams is a safer strategy for financial freedom.

So, when you do this you should establish a goal. Your first step is to create a goal. What is your goal? Well, the definition of financial freedom is to cover your basic living expenses. It means all these little small income sources will cover your basic expenses like… food, shelter, clothing, healthcare… the basic stuff. Just the basics to live, not to be able to party and have fun, not expensive cars, not expensive houses, not any of that stuff just your basic survival expenses. So you want to create several income sources that add up to cover your basic living expenses, then you are financially free. Then you could quit your job or lose your pension, but still have enough to survive and to live decently well. You’re free and then your financial stress disappears, just relax you don’t have to worry about it, no big deal.

All right, step two, you build one income source at a time.

People often ask, should I build several at one time? No. What you want to do is, you get started you choose one. You just make a decision, okay, I need one little income stream. Now, how much do these need to make? When you make your goal, let’s say your basic living expenses just to survive is $2000 a month in your own currency. So $2000 a month, how many income streams should you build or do you need? How many sources of income, little side small sources of income? I say, at least four, four, four is the minimum.

So let’s say you say I’m gonna build four. I’m gonna invest in or create four sources of income to cover my expenses. So, $2000 divided by four = $500. Each income stream only needs to make $500 a month that’s all. That’s doable. For most people, you could figure out how to make an extra $500 a month. You can create some kind of investment or little small tiny business or something, some little source of income that only makes $500 a month. If your expenses are lower, your survival expenses are lower, then each income stream can be even smaller and thus even easier to build.

All right so, you’ve decided, you know your basic expenses and you know you need at least four. You divided by, you know, each stream and how it much it needs to make so now just build one at a time, don’t try to build four it’s too much work, so just choose one. Maybe you decide, I’m gonna make a blog online with advertising and I need my advertising to make at least $500 a month. So, you build your little blog in your spare time, part-time and you keep working on it until you can make $500 a month.

Or, maybe you decide you’re going to write a book, self-publish a book. You put it on Amazon.com or Kobo.com, etc. and your goal is just to get $500 a month from your book. So you have to figure out how to sell your book, how to promote your book so it will make just $500 a month.

Or, maybe you decide real estate’s your thing you want to try that. So you go do research, maybe you have a house already with an extra room, so you could fix it so you could rent that room to tourists or to some local person and you just need to make $500 a month. For example, if your expenses are $2000 then that room only needs to make $500 a month, boom it’s an extra income.

So just choose one. Choose one, and build it up to cover 25% of your survival expenses and once you do that when it gets to that size don’t keep working on that one okay, because building it bigger, eventually it takes a lot of work so you just need to make it small, it just covers 25% of your expenses and then boom, move to the next one and then build that second stream up, that second source of income. It should be a different kind than the first one and then the third one and then the fourth one and if you want you can do five, six and you have lots of little ones coming in. That’s how you do it.

Now, you know, to give you a quick story for myself, several years ago Effortless English was growing, it was doing well, so I had my one business, my one income stream but suddenly actually, Google made a big change. It hurt my business quite a lot, so my business suddenly dropped and it was so, so stressful because my whole business, I realized first of all, all my income was dependent on this one business and my business was so dependent on Google. So when it changed it dropped and oh my Gosh, so much financial stress, it was horrible. That’s when I realized, I need to diversify my income. I need more streams of income.

Maybe I’m not gonna get rich from these other ones but I need at least some other small ones so that we can survive, so I started following this exact strategy and I build several other little ones. I have a book. That’s a separate stream of income from me, separate from my online courses, from the VIP program and then I’ve got other little ones, some investments in other things. So now we have multiple streams of income, so if one drops, if the main big one drops it’s okay. Now luckily I figured things out. Effortless English came back up again but now what’s great is Effortless English came back up, it’s doing well, but I also now have all these other little small streams of income which gives me a lot of security, gives my family a lot of security.

So you can do this.

Now, in the commentary I’m going to give you specific ideas. I’ll talk more about specific ideas for different kinds of small income streams and I’ll give you some specific categories. How can you diversify better? And give you some ideas on how to get started. So that’ll be in the commentary more specific strategies for building your multiple streams of income so you will achieve financial freedom.

See you in the commentary.