Job of the Future: Multiple Streams of Income?
Having my mind constantly focused on the question “How do I help people make money doing what they love?” for almost ten months straight now has led me to some interesting discoveries. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that a lot of people have no clue what they want to do. Even when given the opportunity to choose any path they want they simply freeze and have no clue what they want.
From my own soul-searching efforts on the topic I have found that the difficulty usually arises when we make the assumption that the thing that we’re supposed to love doing is some kind of “job”. Meaning, people may be currently working at a job they hate, but really when they try to sit down and think about what they DO want, they draw a blank.
What I’m seeing more and more of amongst people who seem to have found their “groove” out there is that they’ve let go of the notion that happiness is going to be found in some perfect job out there. Meaning, they are starting to look at the issue a lot more creatively.
For example, let’s say that you currently make $6,000/month at your current job working 40-50h/week, but you’re not happy working there. So you sit down and try to figure out what else you could do to make $6,000/month doing something you love. You keep drawing a blank. The reason for this may be because you’re looking at the problem from the wrong perspective.
Instead of thinking about how you would go about making $6,000/month from a “job” or even a business you start, what if you looked for ways in which you could make $1,000/month or $2,000/month working part time hours. Then, instead of thinking in terms of having ONE source of income you start thinking along the terms of multiple sources of income.
What if you should be looking at making $1,500/month per “part time opportunity” but take on four of them at the same time.
Take Blogging for example. Let’s say I wanted to make $10,000/month. Last month I made over $1,500 from my Blog. What if I just focused on getting my Blog to the $3,300/month mark and then looked for two other sources of income instead of trying to get my income to $10,000/month right away? Nobody says you have to limit yourself to just one “project”.
For some people, they just can’t handle doing more than one thing at a time, but for a lot of us, especially “scanners” doing only one thing sounds a lot like a jail sentence. If I can make $2,500/month from my Blog working 2 hours on it, it doesn’t mean I have to necessarily scale it up four times and work 8 hours/day on it to make $10,000/m from it. I can continue working on it for 2hours/day and then find three other projects I can work on for 2 hours / day.
A lot of times when you work on projects that way, they can have a complimentary effect on each other. You can learn something from one project and apply it to the others and vice versa.
This path of “multiple sources of income” can also provide a lot more security in your life if done properly. For example, imagine if I focused on making $2,500/m from my Blog, another $2,500/m from a consulting business, another $2,500/m from affiliate marketing and another $2,500/m from running a martial arts dojo with a friend. Wouldn’t that be a lot more “secure” than trying to make $10,000/m from any one of those projects?
I mean don’t get me wrong…I would still want to maximize my income from each of the projects, so if I could make $4,000/m from each of them while still working only 2h/day on them I would, but I’m just saying that there is no reason I couldn’t do all four things at the same time.
Another possibility would be to do projects during different times of the year. For example, let’s say you did part time book-keeping / tax preperation. You could focus all of your efforts on that little business during tax season and then do other stuff during the rest of the year.
Often times when I talk to people about what they love to do they might give me a list that may look like this:
- I love gardening
- I love reading
- I love personal development
- I love dogs
- I love painting
- I love graphics design
- I love music
- I love working with people
- I love blogging
- etc.
Then they may say something like “I just don’t see how I could ever make enough money to support myself doing any of those things. That’s why right now I work as an assistant restaurant manager. I don’t like the job, but it pays the bills.”
The reason they don’t see how they could ever make enough money to support themselves from ANY of those things is because they think they have to choose just one. Who says?! Do ALL of them if you want!
Start a little graphical design business and build it up to make $200-$500/m. Start a Blog and build it up to $200-$500/m. Start a landscaping business you mostly focus on in the summertime. Do some painting and sell those too. Who says you have to stick to just one thing?
Taking the approach of having multiple streams of income also has an added benefit. What most people find is that when they list off the things that they love to do, when they try to visualize doing ONE thing ALL day long every single day, such as if they worked in a job doing that thing, they very quickly see that they would be totally bored with it. They’ll typically say “I love doing _______, but if i had to do it as a job I would hate it, so there’s no point. I’ll just stay at the job I hate, and do __________ on the weekends for fun so that I don’t get bored of it.”
Don’t assume that you have to do just ONE thing to pay all of your bills. If you organize yourself properly, you could easily handle 4-6 projects simultaneously without even breaking a sweat, provided you eliminated “employee” mentality thinking and organized your projects in such a way that they complement each other.
Something to think about. 
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| 14 Comments
I quite like this idea. Since I’ve started blogging it seems a natural progression (I guess the indirect monetary methods got me thinking this way).
Now it’s just a matter of deciding how to employ it.
Hi Paul,
My problem hasn’t been knowing what I want to do but making money at it (parly because I loath sales I guess).
Do you think it is possible to develop multiple streams of income on line (say a blog, a membership site, e-books, tapes, maybe coaching/consulting) or do you think it better to mix online and offline?
@Evan: Completely up to you. However, I would consider at least making one of your activities “offline” so that you don’t turn into a Hobbit.
Sometimes I get the best ideas for Blog articles by being out there in the “real world”. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make money in the “offline” world. I guess you could still be social and participate in events and meetups and network with people but keep your income producing efforts strictly online if you wanted to.
Yeah, I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do strictly online if that’s what all your passions were.
Paul,
As a fellow scanner I agree with you completely. I always have a number of projects going. My challenge is using my time efficiently on each as I learn to make them profitable.
You make a good point about balancing online work with some “offline” socializing and participating. Not only do I get great ideas offline, but also get rejuvenated.
Thanks for this great article.
I am a big believer in multiple streams of income–I think that’s one of the smartest things you can do. However, people run into problems not just because they don’t know what they want to do, but also because they don’t know HOW to do it. Say someone looks at your ideas and they decide to pursue affiliate marketing. The challenge is cutting through the overwhelm that is out there and choosing a way to learn this. How do I start? Who has the best course/program/seminar/ebook etc. for me? How do I know I am choosing the right one? Am I spending my money wisely?
Sometimes figuring this out can be just as frustrating and discouraging as when you have no idea which streams to pursue.
Great post Paul. I have a post coming up on rebel Zen that deals with the issue of life purpose. I’ll let you know when it’s done. Maybe it will be of some help to your readers.
All the things I do are very closely related but I love variety in my ‘work’. I struggled for years with the ‘pick one’ mindset and never could - consequently I often chose none. Now I just think what the hell, if I want to do it just do it. It’s important for me not to get too scattered so I just go with the things that most inspire me and see what happens.
Great Idea Paul. It’s the kind of “outside of the lines” paradigm that gets you to think. One good term I like is the term “Reproductive residual Income” Meaning: If you can develop a business that takes care of it’self, then it just adds to your multifinancial income. For example , I still make money off of my first album that I recorded in 2002.
One good thing about MLMs is that, if you work it right, (and you get a good product to sell, where there’s just as much joy in selling the product as getting others in your downline) The money keeps coming even when you feel like taking an extended vacation. And if you’re really good, you’ll expand in areas related to what you’re doing. One area that I like and I feel is going to be huge (bigger than it is now) is the “Wellness” industry. Just about anything from aroma Rx to Magnets to Vitamins (pronounced Vit- a - mins in Canada eh?) to crystals and Chakra clearing methods can be offered at the same time.
I honestly believe that versatility and flexability are going to be the survival tools of the future. The 3rd industrial paradigm of working 30 years for the gold watch is almost gone. With jobs being outsourced and top level corruption so ubiquitious, the more you can rely on yourself, the better off you’ll be.
Sorry for rambeling.
Ace
@Ace Andres: Absolutely. You’re right on the money there. I would say that within less than 12 months I’ll be earning an income from at least six completely different income sources. One of which is nutrition related since I hold an advanced nutritionist diploma and am heavily interested in learning more about the whole “wellness” industry. Basically all kinds of healing without the use of surgery or pharmaceuticals.
Some MLM’s are cool too, especially if you know how to market yourself properly. Another cool thing about MLM’s such as for example Tupperware is that they now offer an affiliate program so you don’t even have to just limit yourself to offline “Tupperware Parties”. I remember listening to an audio by Joel Comm where he says his wife makes fun of him because one of his income streams is selling Tupperware (online), LOL.
This is a fantastic post, Paul. It actually such obvious advice, and yet for so many of us it’s hard to see. Myself included, I am very prone to tunnell vision and not being able to focus on more than one things at a time.
Paul,
With regards to MLMs, I wouldn’t sell anything that I personally didn’t believe in. One good example of a wellness product that kicks butt is “Nikken”. The magnet field offers some great wellness products that are great to have around the house (pronounced “hoose” in Canada eh?)
I can see having that line while offering designer vit- amins. Or if you had a massage business, you could combine the aroma Rx with magnets and vitamins.
That sounds very cool.
@Ace Andres: A lot of MLM’s have really good products. You just have to find ones that correspond with what you believe in. If you don’t believe in the product you’ll never be able to sell anything as people can see right through that.
Paul,
Totally true! although the problem many internet marketers have is jumping around from one project to the next before any of them make any profit.
If you find yourself doing this, stop, focus on one project until it starts making money (like $1 a day), then keep that on the side while working on others.
If you try and do everything at once at the start you’ll find yourself frustrated after a year of work and no profits to show for it.
Cheers, Tim
I have already started thinking along the same lines myself. FInd ways of making money out of all the things you like to do. Life is too short to do a job you hate when there are so many ways to make money using your creativity. I am now making a good income videoing weddings, part-time life style management business (everything from house-sitting to mowing lawns, write blogs, group travel…
I started a discussion forum for people to brain storm ideas on making money and discuss all issues of personal development. selfchangeclub.com/forums