PASSIVE INCOME DESIGNERS BUSINESS DESIGN FREEDOM EPISODE #001 THE 7 MYTHS OF PASSIVE INCOME

Transcription

1 PASSIVE INCOME for DESIGNERS BUSINESS DESIGN FREEDOM EPISODE #001 THE 7 MYTHS OF PASSIVE INCOME I d love to get your feedback on this podcast. Visit the Passive Income for Designers Facebook Group or me at dustin@passiveincomefordesigners.com. I d love to hear from you!

2 INTRODUCTION Welcome to Passive Income for Designers, the show that helps designers, illustrators, and other digital creatives create a passive income from their talents so they can take back their creative and financial freedom. I'm your host Dustin Lee, and today we're going to talk about the seven myths of passive income. In this episode I'm going to share with you the common misconceptions of creating a passive income business including why today, literally the day you're listening to this, is the best time to start building your passive income business. But before we start, I want to highly encourage you to visit There, you'll find some free training that will help you find profitable passive income ideas that are probably already sitting on your hard drive waiting to be packed up and put up for sale. So, since this is the first episode of Passive Income for Designers, I want to share a little bit about myself so you know that you're listening to somebody that has some experience and some success in this, so you can feel confident moving forward knowing you have good information. I'm the owner of RetroSupply Co., and you can find that at as well as on Creative Market. I sell Photoshop and Illustrator resources for designers, and in the past year alone I've made $235,000 in revenue selling these products. I've been able to eliminate all of my credit card debt for my family which was over $35,000. I've been able to save a significant amount of money in the bank. I've been able to buy myself and my family our first home, which is a beautiful home in Vancouver, Washington. It's the kind of home that I never grew up in. I certainly didn't have a rough childhood, but I guess I never had a house like this. I never thought that I would actually be in a position to have this kind of home. It's not a mansion or anything, but I guess what I'm saying is my point is that this passive income business has made a lot of things happen that I never dreamed would happen. I know for a fact that if I can do it, you can do it. So I want to share as much of my knowledge as I can with you so you can kind of download that into your brain and use that to your advantage to help you get that freedom and joy that this business has brought me. Again, in this first episode we're going to cover seven common myths of passive income. The reason I want to do this is because I think there's a lot of misconceptions about a passive income business. I think that by understanding what you can expect and what you shouldn't expect, will help you feel comfortable moving forward. With that out of the way, let's get started. MYTH #1 Myth number one is passive income is 100% passive. About 10 years ago, an author named Tim Ferriss wrote a book called "The 4-Hour Workweek." In that book, he describes how you can build a business and work four hours or less a week and generate a full time income essentially doing nothing, or at least that's the myth that has then circulated from this book. Although I'm

3 sure he would tell you that's not really what he meant or intended when he wrote the book. All that to say that passive income is not 100% passive. Yes, you create a product once and then it sells and generates revenue for a long period of time, which is the definition of passive income. You make something and then it creates revenue for you without you doing any work. It is true that you create something once and that it creates revenue for you for a long period of time, but it's not true that it's 100% passive. The reason being, because if you want to be successful at having a passive income business, you need to do some certain things like support your customers and make sure you're updating products and giving them support. You're going to want to make sure that you're bringing in new customers by making connections with people that can put you in front of an audience that needs what you're selling. Those are just two of a handful of things that you need to do on a regular basis to keep your passive income business generating revenue. All that to say you can do this in much less time than you would on, say, freelance work or doing overtime. Once you have products done you can live off them for a long time and not do nearly as much work to maintain them as you would do to make the same amount of money doing freelance work, for example. MYTH #2 Myth number two is that I need to be a business genius to build a passive income stream. I am here to tell you you absolutely don't need to be a business genius to build a passive income stream. You don't have to understand complex business jargon or business concepts. When it comes down to it, business is really simple. Particularly in a passive income business there are less moving parts and it's even more simple. And it really comes down to this: you need to make a product that people want that helps to eliminate a pain that they have. Then, you need to get it in front of them, you need to build trust with them, and then you need to ask them to buy it. Those are the four components of building a passive income stream. That's all the business knowledge you need. We can get very fine grained into different techniques for accomplishing all those goals. One of the goals of this podcast is to dig into different concepts that I've found are the highest leverage for your time so you can have success faster and easier, but when it comes down to it, those are the four things that you need. You need to have product that eliminates a pain that your customers have. You need to have a way to get in front of those customers. You need to build trust and credibility with those customers. Then, you need to ask them to buy. Of course, you need to have a way to deliver the product to them and take payment. MYTH #3 Myth number three is that creating a passive income business is a huge risk. I created a little guide that I put onto Gumroad, and it was called Passive Income for Designers. It's still up if you want to go check it out or grab it. After I released it I contacted a lot of people that bought it, and I jumped on Skype with them and talked to them about what their hesitations were, about what I

4 was teaching, and what their beliefs were about building a passive income product. One of the most common misconceptions I had was that they believed it was a huge risk. I remember one person in particular was a successful freelancer. He said, "You know, I'm afraid to turn down freelance work so I have the time to build this passive income idea, because I'm afraid that it won't make any money and then I've lost out on the income I would've made doing freelance work because I built this product that no one bought." So because of that, he felt like that was a huge risk. I'm here to tell you that although of course anything where you're going to gain this kind of freedom is going to have some risk, it certainly isn't a huge amount of risk if you do it right. When I say do it right that means listening to what customers want and giving them what they need to eliminate a pain point. Creating a passive income business that's profitable isn't about making something that you think is neat and hoping people buy it. Creating a passive income business is about finding something that people desperately want or desperately desire and then making that for them. You kind of have to reverse it. When you think of things in that way and you structure the way you create products in that way, the risk is very low. Because before you ever create the product, you know people want it because they've given you feedback letting you know they want it. In future episodes I will share with you some techniques for how you can find out exactly what they want, how you can dig into their brains, literally know exactly to a tee what they wish they had, and then you can make it for them. So you know that when they read that description of this product you've created, they feel like you've read their mind and someone finally listened to them and created something they want. Creating a passive income business is not a huge risk, because when you do it right you create a product, you tweak it, and it starts to build revenue, then you don't have to continue to work the same amount for it to create ongoing revenue for you. In contrast to doing freelance work or working overtime, you do that one time, you get paid for it and then you never get paid for it again. Think about that and think about which one is more risky to you. Is it more risky to create something that you know people want because they've told you they want it and you've gotten their feedback and it generates sales, or is it more risky to do work one time and only get paid for it one time and then have to repeat that process? I think you'll find that it's pretty easy to tell that creating a passive income business can be a huge help for this problem. One more note on this. When you create a passive income business, even if it takes a couple false starts or you have some struggles in the beginning, imagine what happens once you make, say, even $500 extra a month. Let's say you make a passive income product and it regularly is generating $500 a month. Think about the extra padding that gives you in the sense of, at the beginning of the month you can feel confident knowing, "I'm making this extra $500 every month." That means that you can maybe more easily turn down a project that doesn't match your skills or your passion. So you're not doing what I call secret graphic design projects that freelancers do that they never show in their portfolios because it's not their kind of work. They're kind of embarrassed by it, but they do it because they need a paycheck.

5 Imagine having the freedom of knowing, "This money's coming in, I don't have to take that project if I don't have to, and instead I can go do something that I love doing," whether that be hanging out with your kids or hanging out with friends or going on a trip. Creating a passive income business eliminates a lot of risk and gives you freedom to choose projects you love and not rely on your freelance customers or your job so intensely for your freedom. MYTH #4 Myth number four is everything needs to be perfect before I launch my business. Before I started RetroSupply, I worked for a company called Paid to Exist that you can find at paidtoexist.com. It was an amazing experience. I can honestly say that it literally changed the course of my life working for this business. Essentially what we did was we provided paid training for people that helped them to get their passions and their strengths and convert that into a business that they could make a full time income from. Working for this business, I was able to see inside forums and s from customers and see all their struggles they went through in building a business. It was really illuminating. The reason I say that is because when people are building businesses, I personally thought that the struggles came in, I don't know, I guess later in the process, like getting all the parts of the website to work or getting customers. I don't know, things like that, challenges you would have like, "How am I going to find customers," or, "how am I going to deliver this product? How am I going to fulfill it? What service am I going to use that's going to allow me to accomplish all my goals?" But, that wasn't actually the big struggle that people had. The big struggle people had was they wanted everything to be perfect before they launched. They wanted to have the perfect logo. They wanted to have the perfect website copy. They wanted to have the perfect description of what their business was. They wanted all these things just so, and this was like a disease. For, like, 95% of people that built businesses, this was what stopped them. My theory on what is happening here is that people are subconsciously sabotaging themselves because they're afraid if they actually put something out it's going to fail. So instead, they focus on these things that really don't matter, like having a perfect description of the business and having the website just perfect and having the perfect logo. I'm here to tell you, none of that matters. None of that should be a priority until your business is generating a healthy amount of revenue, because you don't know if you've designed any of that stuff correctly until you know exactly who your customers are and exactly what they want. For instance, RetroSupply has been around for over three years now I believe. Up until three months ago, the logo was just the word RetroSupply typed in I think it was Futura or Gotham or something like that. I knew that it was not important to create a great looking logo, because that doesn't create revenue. That's a distraction that is totally pointless to deal with until you have a successful business. Now I have a really cool logo that I love and I put it on everything, but that is not something to worry about when you're starting. I guess all that to say that when you're starting your passive income business, please don't think

6 about being perfect. Don't worry about having the perfect platform or the perfect website. It's important to get something out there, to get that product out there and start getting feedback. That's all that matters. Literally, that's all that matters. Don't worry about anything else. Everything else can be adjusted. You just need to get something out there and tweak it. MYTH #5 Myth number five is everyone is going to laugh at me and no one will buy my stuff. This was my personal downfall forever before I started RetroSupply. I had this false belief about myself that I think a lot of designers have, that I wasn't good enough. I would look on Dribble and see the top 20 people on Dribble and the work they were making, and I knew mine wasn't as good as that. I felt like, "Well, if mine's not that good I'm not a good designer." The truth is that's a complete lie and that's completely not true. There's always going to be a handful of people that are on the top of any given social media group or any industry. But just because they have the most followers or because they're doing great work doesn't mean your work isn't great. I had this fear that I was going to create a shop and sell these resources like logo templates or textures or different things and designers were going to buy them or look at them and laugh at me and tell me that I sucked and that who did I think I was creating this stuff. I can tell you after three and a half years of doing this that I've never had someone laugh at me and I've never had someone write me and tell me that I sucked. I've had people on very rare occasions say, "I'm not happy with this." I've had a decent amount of people, the amount you would expect, say, "This isn't the right fit for me." But, I've never had people harshly tell me that things were not good or anything like that. In fact, I learned that because I spent so much time developing these things I actually was an expert on this. I was fulfilling something that most designers don't like doing which is making textures and making brushes and making actions and finding hacks and fast ways to do things. Most designers would rather be designing or illustrating, not trying to make perfect textures to put on their work. If you're someone that's afraid that you're going to release a passive income product or make a passive income business and people are going to laugh at you and not buy your stuff, I'm here to tell you that if you focus on trying to please your customers, no one is going to do either of those things. Sure, in the beginning maybe you won't make a ton of money. Maybe you'll have to make some adjustments. But if you follow what we're going to talk about in upcoming episodes, you are not going to have that problem. I can promise you that. MYTH #6 Myth number six is if my product doesn't sell immediately I've failed. A lot of people, 95% of people never get the product out the door. They talk about it. They tell you all about how great

7 it's going to be, but when it comes down to it, they get stuck in that trap of perfection of making a website, of doing all these things that don't matter. Eventually they get burned out on the idea and they give up before it ever launches. The five percent of people that do get something out the door, or I guess I would say four, because a certain percent of people do succeed, the four percent of people that do get something out the door, it doesn't sell immediately and they decide, "Well this passive income thing obviously is a sham," or, "I don't have what it takes to make this work," and they give up. Typically what that means is they've released the product on some platform. They've tweeted it a couple of times and shared a couple of things on Instagram and got either zero sales or a very small amount of sales that was not inspiring to them to continue building the business, and they give up. I'm here to say that this is a myth. If your product doesn't sell immediately, you have not failed. You have released a product like every other person ever has in the history of making products. Products don't immediately sell. It takes consistent work and consistent investment in the beginning, kind of like revving an engine or starting an engine. You need to get it primed to get everything rolling. That's going to mean finding traffic. That's going to mean leveraging partners that have an audience that wants what you have. That's going to mean spending more time than you will later talking to customers and supporting customers and helping customers. That's going to mean talking about your business constantly wherever people will listen to try to get exposure. Once you've done that for a decent amount of time, you will find that your product starts to sell more and that it will start to kind of sell on autopilot. Typically that happens after you get, I guess what I call your big break. For me, my big break was when my first product was featured in Creative Markets' newsletter. When that happened, their newsletter at that time I think went out to something around 120,000 to 150,000 people. When that newsletter went out, I think in that day I made somewhere around $1100 or $1200. Pretty much after that, everything was easier. It wasn't that I didn't have to make good products or that I didn't have to work hard to market it, but that was a big break that started making...it primed the pump and got income coming in. Myth number six. If my product doesn't sell immediately I've failed. Not true. If your product doesn't sell immediately, you've experienced what happens to everyone when they release a product. They need to do a little hustling. They need to do some listening to customers. MYTH #7 Our final myth is myth number seven, and that myth is I need the perfect idea before I launch. This kind of ties into myth number four. When you're first starting, you're not going to know what the perfect product is before you launch. I'll tell you how you do find the perfect idea. You find the perfect idea by launching something now, today. That's why I said that something I wanted to share with you was that you should start today. For instance, right now if you've listened this far you're probably thinking, "Okay, Dustin told me

8 there are some things he's going to teach me in the future that are going to make this easier." You might be saying to yourself, "I'm going to wait until he explains that before I move forward with my business." But ;et me tell you, there's always going to be some sort of information that you think you're going to find in the future. If you continue to wait to try to get complete information, you'll never release anything. Don't worry about finding the perfect idea before you launch. Make something today and put it out there. More points to you if it's kind of scrappy and there are some misspelled words or it's not perfectly designed. Get it out there. Don't make it perfect. Just get it out there. Share it with people. Get feedback and tweak it. If you want a really simple blueprint for doing that, like I said before, you can go to You'll find some very quick training that will give you a step by step blueprint for doing that. It's really fast. Literally if you have five or six hours today, you can listen to this training, get something out the door, and start getting feedback about a product, and that will be the beginning of your passive income business. It will be very humble, it will be not perfect, but it will change your life forever. I can promise you, once you get something out the door and once you start getting feedback and once you realize you're the type of person that does make a little business and release product, it will change you. The hard part of making my business successful was not hustling after I'd started it or making the products. The hard part was the mental barrier of originally saying to myself, "I am going to invest time in building products and then I'm going to put them up in front of people and risk their criticism or condemnation because they think that I'm not good enough. If you can overcome that and put something out, you have done the very hardest part of creating a product or creating a profitable passive income business. There are so many times that I look back and think, "Man, what if I had had a little bit different conversation with myself when I was thinking about making RetroSupply? What if when I was thinking of ideas to make some extra revenue to pay for my baby's diapers and things like that, what if I told myself it's stupid to think you can make a passive income from that, you should go do some freelance work, or it's silly to think you should do that. You need to grow up and go get a job at a grocery store part time on the weekends or something like that?" Often it scares me to think what would've happened if I hadn't decided to take that leap and put myself out there and make something. CONCLUSION Those are the seven myths of passive income that hold people back. I hope that by discussing these and dispelling some of these myths, I hope that it makes you feel more empowered to create something and it inspires you to feel like it's possible for you. I would love to know. I would love to get your s. What's something you've been telling yourself that you suspect is a myth that has been stopping you from creating a passive income

9 business? You can comment on this on the blog where you can listen to these episodes, or you can me at and share with me. What have you been telling yourself that is a myth or something that has stopped you in your tracks and that has made you put off starting this passive income business? I'd love to hear what your feelings are about that. I will do my best to help you to destroy that limiting belief so you can move forward and start to regain your creative and financial freedom. Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of Passive Income for Designers. It means a lot to have you listening to this. I will truly try my hardest and be in your service to give you accurate and full information to help you grow your business so you can experience that freedom and getting out of that cycle of living paycheck to paycheck or freelance job to freelance job. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.