Topics Covered This Week
No one owes you a job for life
This is NOT financial advice.
I want you to think about the mindset shift you can take to embrace a new way of earning your money.
If you have a passion, knowledge, creative skill, you can earn money selling products or exploiting that knowledge to help others.
Income v outlay, setting goals, taking action can ensure you have financial resilience.
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(00:00):
Hi, Christie here on the 2nd of November recording ready for tomorrow on a very, very windy, but sunny day in the UK.
Hope this finds you well and safe.
I want to start with a disclaimer, which isn’t usually like me, but I just want to explain that this isn’t financial advice. I’m not a financial advisor. I don’t claim to be, it’s just tips and hints on the subject we’re going to cover today – multiple streams of income.
If you’ve not heard of those before, I will give you an explanation of how I see it.
Whatever age you may be you may have been brought up, especially if you’re in the UK, to expect to get a wage, to have a career.
That you leave school, you might go to university or college, but then you will go on through your lifetime, work, promotion, and all’s tickety-boo, we get a pension and then you retire.
(01:03):
But life isn’t like that. And increasingly it’s becoming less like that.
It’s a bit of a mindset shift rather than a financial podcast.
I want you to get your head round the fact that just because things were done that way back in the day, and post-war, that was the way that careers were built, it doesn’t mean it’s the way now.
Sometimes it can be difficult to get your head round that.
I see quite a lot of press reports and interviews, etc, with people who have been made redundant (And I’m certainly not judging because I’d been made redundant numerous times as you may well know if you’ve followed me on social media before in my coaching and it’s horrendous.)
It’s not something that I would wish on anybody, but quite often, I see people sort of demanding the right to a ‘job for life’ and that just doesn’t exist anymore.
(01:55):
You can’t make other people feel obliged to use you over and above how they choose to run their business.
It just doesn’t work like that I’m afraid.
First of all, get into the mindset that nobody owes you a living, it’s up to you to take control of your life, to take control of your finances.
To educate yourself.
I might sound very judgmental there but don’t expect other people to push you up there. I’ll give you a hand up. Lots of people will give you a hand up.
I’m here to support you obviously as much as I can with learning and development, but ultimately, if you want the lifestyle, then you need to do the work.
I want to go through the multiple streams of income. This isn’t an exhaustive list because there are thousands of ways that you can earn a living, but it’s basically giving you advice that is different to just going in, getting your wage packet, come home to sit back ‘job done’.
I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s far from easy. It’s hard work, but it is something that can be done.
And it is the new model so try and look at it that way.
So the first thing to do is to consider
(03:20):
what you want to do. I’ve gone into that
(03:24):
on various episodes, and I’m not going to go into it now, but what do you want to do as a career, as the rest of your life.
You may be very lucky.
You might be working in your ideal career. You’re earning the money, and taking the wage home at the end of the day. That’s great.
But what COVID has taught us is that adaptability is how you survive in business, whether that be building in resilience to your own work, having a second line of income, isn’t a bad idea.
So even if you’re in a waged income, think of these as possible additions to that and ways to boost your income.
(04:02):
First of all is investments, which goes without saying that if you’ve got enough money on one side to make investments, property shares, whatever, then that’s how you can make money.
That is one of the things you could possibly aim for, to be able to sideline some of your money into investments.
The financial advisors will tell you there’s different levels of risk.
Some is highly risky. Don’t put your house on the line.
If you haven’t done your research and you don’t know what you’re doing, because people do lose their properties, they end up homeless and it’s horrendous, but they can also make a lot of money.
Bitcoin is a prime example of new currencies and new investments coming out. Do your research and just consider it that long-term a good investment into property, into whatever happens to be in your geographic area.
Then that is one of the ways, it’s an anchor, a stream of income, even though you spending money on it, it could bring money in. If you do it properly,
(05:06):
Another stream of income you could consider is flipping.
It could be property it’s where a lot of people are at nowadays, especially in the UK, sadly, because unfortunately it’s pushing first-time buyers out of the market.
Quite a lot of landlords are now buying up property cheap, doing it up or selling it on that’s flipping, but it doesn’t have to be property.
It could be anything.
You could buy something maybe on eBay, you’ve done your research, you know, that you can get a bit more money for that.
It might only be £5 and you can double it to £10, but you’ve doubled your income.
You can then invest that £10 into another piece. That’s £10 and you double it to £20, you get the idea.
Flipping is a really good way of just sort of putting your toe in the water really of extra ways to earn your money.
(05:57):
Never invest more on flipping than you can afford to lose. Just be very careful on it.
Production.
You could produce t-shirts / products. There’s Amazon Merchandising.
There’s numerous different outlets, Teemill which I’m going to look into shortly. I’m on Amazon at the moment, but Teemill is an eco company with a very good green record on planet aware record, which is what I’m trying to get into.
[Note from Christie – Not a recommendation, as ever do your own research!]
Basically you design.
If you’re creative, this is ideal for you, you design a t-shirt and sell it on. It might be something simple, like your child’s in a club or youth club and you arrange to get some t-shirts printed and you might make £1 on each t-shirt and you might donate that to their charity.
Look at products, mugs, mouse-mats, there’s 1000s of different options, Amazon Merchandising, Zazzle, Shopify, etc.
(06:53):
Writing a book, obviously you know I’m mad passionate to get everybody writing. Writing books is a way to earn money, it’s not easy. I’m not saying it is.
[Note from Christie: If you have a big online community, even a short ebook at 99p can bring in substantial funds.]
You’ll actually see on my YouTube channel I’ve done ’20 ways to earn money as a writer.’ so I won’t go into that in detail here, but you can do print on demand.
You don’t have to buy loads of books and have them sat in your back bedroom while you’re trying to sell them, they’re printed as and when people buy them.
Have a think about writing a book, if you’re a speaker or you’ve got knowledge, then someone else will want that knowledge.
(07:41):
Writing books, writing on blog posts, do sponsored blogs.
There’s a forum called Medium, which if you can get on there, and you get good at what you do, I’m not saying it’s easy to make money, but if you’re good and you make the commitment, you can make money there as well.
And there’s various other places, even Instagram or you can do sponsored blog posts on your own website.
Affiliate marketing is a massive area where you can earn money, but there’s different levels. For example, I’m an affiliate to Craghopper Clothing, I always affiliate with companies that I support and that I agree with. If somebody clicks on my link and they go to the site, I get a tiny commission and it’s tiny and the other person doesn’t pay any more money.
(08:35):
You’re not ripping off anybody. It’s promoting a product that you like basically.
But what I would say with affiliate marketing, and again, do your research, sounding boring, but it’s often better to be affiliated to a bigger product.
You might know somebody who has got a coaching program at £5,000, and they’ll give you up to 50% commissions, I’ve seen on these.
It’s an area where you could make vast sums of money, but you need to know your market.
You need to build your tribe.
You need to know what you’re doing and have an audience. It’s not just,
‘Oh, I’m going to get commission on that. I’ll sell that’ but it is another stream of income.
The last one I wanted to just mentioned now is online courses.
If you’re in a job where you’re doing something that you know, or you’ve got a hobby and a skill then, you know, someone else will want to learn how to do what you do.
(09:31):
You’ve only got to look on YouTube to see, I’m sure if you’ve ever had anything break down you’re probably like me that you’ll go to YouTube.
‘How do I mend this?’
That person will probably get paid for you going there.
They’ll probably have ads on there. If they’ve got a lot of viewers, my YouTube channel is quite small, so I can’t yet earn a lot of money on there on ads, but some people do.
Do your research.
Don’t look at the headlines.
Don’t be impressed by these people who say, ‘if you create an online course, you can earn six figures next month,’ you might be extremely lucky and if you know what you’re doing, you might be able to do that.
(10:16):
But don’t forget that if somebody makes six figures, it doesn’t mean that they’ve got six figures in the bank account.
They might have spent 50% of that on advertising or marketing, on assistants, guest posts, etc. so really dig down behind all the headlines and read and read and read about your topic.
I want you to know that this is more of a mind shift shift issue than me telling you how you can go and easily and earn money.
Side hustle sounds a bit sleazy to me, but people are talking now, more and more, about having a ‘side hustle’ having a different way of making money, something that they do over and above what they’re doing ‘at work.’
Anytime you’re trying to shift direction and change your mindset with regards to money and career development or pivoting, it’s a lot easier to do it while you’ve got income coming in from somewhere else.
(11:18):
Try to start saving some money, put a bit on one side.
I know it’s easily said and you’d be like, ‘Oh, I can’t save anything.’
You can probably not spend as much on that sandwich at lunchtime. Maybe don’t have a coffee from the fancy coffee shop, try to save money whilst you’re in a job.
Many people who’ve gone to the multiple streams of income model have actually downsized and got money in as an income stream from their property and the belongings they have in the home.
They might have done a massive car boot sale or garage sale as you call it in America, It might be that you downsize the property and go to something way smaller.
There’s a huge move at the moment of people going into ‘van life’ and ‘tiny homes’.
That’s another stream of income money coming in from, and that’s where you can get your investment money from, make interest on the money or invest in your new business, if you’re wanting to set up a new business.
So get away from thinking of side hustle as something sleazy and think of it as a new brand that you’re starting with. You know, your initial little new business.
(12:36):
Definitely set some financial goals.
Sit down and work out, are you really unhappy with what you’re doing?
Or are you just building resilience plan?
Because that is very different.
I’m a firm believer in having a Plan B because having been made redundant, like I say, more than once and quite often, totally out of the blue, it’s terrifying to suddenly think you’re not going to have any income there.
If you’re living day to day, it’s difficult to save, but there are steps that you can take very small steps, but there’s still steps in the right direction.
(13:10):
Be realistic.
Don’t set out to get the six figures by the end of the month.
Set some really achievable financial goals.
Set SMART goals, which is what I discussed last week about your personal life. So have a listen to last week’s episode about that.
Consider debt management.
If you are finding that you’re spending beyond your means and you just don’t have the money to invest, to start with these multiple streams of income or at least one other multiple, another stream of income, then look at debt management.
Get an expert to sit down with you and go through how you can dig yourself out of a hole, maybe with a year’s plan or a two year plan or whatever.
Use one of these extra multiple streams of income in the meanwhile to just supplement that debt management.
As daft as it sounds, one of the best ways to earn money through multiple streams of income is not to spend any money.
(14:10):
Obviously you might need to invest in your business, spend on advertising, but if you’re spending a £1 to make £2, that’s fine.
One advantage of this lockdown / COVID dilemma that we’re all in at the moment (November, 2020) is that it’s made lots of people realise that actually they don’t need as much as they were buying before
They can manage on less, the can buy less, they can enjoy a better quality of life with less.
They don’t have to be going out and buying new clothes every week. It’s one good thing that’s come out of this virus situation.
(14:52):
I just want to show you that it’s a mindset shift, that there are different ways of living your life other than going into the office, working on the treadmill of a rat race I’ve been there. I know what it’s like.
I know the responsibilities that you have to cover, I’m certainly not saying that you haven’t got responsibilities, to just walk away from them and you know, live the dream. It’s not like that.
BUT
I want you to realise that by adopting multiple streams of income, if one of those streams stops, you’ve got the others to fall back on and it’s not so terrifying.
So go buy some books, do some research, have a look round, maybe join some groups. I’ll put some links in the show notes for you for, especially for books about this.
Nanowrimo is on this week, if you’re not already writing because it’s National Novel Writing Month.
So write a book, sell the book at the end of November.
There you go.
Another stream of income.
Have a lovely day. Bye.