Your employment in your traditional nine to
five job is keeping you poor.
At the start of 2020, 64% of the US.
Population was living paycheck to paycheck. And even among those who are earning six
figures in their job, 48% of those say
that they too are living paycheck to paycheck.
According to a recent report, americans now say
that they need to be making roughly $122,000
a year in order to ensure financial security.
However, for those of you who also
live in my home state of California,
unfortunately the numbers are much higher.
$120,000 is considered low income, inflation is
outpacing wage growth in the United States,
and this is a huge problem.
I want to share with you a mindset
and action plan to completely change everything for
your financial situation for the better.
Before I explain this, I want to
acknowledge that this is not for everyone.
There is immense value in job security, set
hours, employee benefits, company health care, and not
being responsible for the fate of the business.
But for those who do have the motivation to
be their own boss and break through the income
limitations that are put on employees of the workforce,
I want to talk about one of the biggest
reasons being self employed can change your life.
There are two problems with traditional employment
which keeps workers in an exhausting cycle
of working paycheck to paycheck.
Number one is that you have an
income ceiling a maximum amount that you
could potentially earn in a specific job.
Sure, this can be increased over
time with raises, bonuses or overtime.
But in general you are going to receive a certain
amount of pay for a certain amount of work.
Which brings us to the second problem that your
income amount is defined by the time spent working.
Whether you are paid hourly or you are salaried, you
have an amount of time that you're expected to work,
though if you're salaried it often times is more.
And for that amount of work, you are
then paid a certain amount in exchange.
This time exchange for money means that you can never
grow your income beyond the amount of work that you
can actually take on or the amount that is available.
You have 24 hours in a day and no more.
This can lead to a frustrating cycle of
trading time for money, which results in little
financial growth, not to mention extreme exhaustion of
the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.
We are taught to approach work this way.
We go to school and we either learn a
trade or go on to earn a degree.
Then we trade our time for money.
What the schools are failing to teach, however,
is that this is not the only option.
Trading time for money means that there's
a limit on your earning potential.
However, developing income streams that are not dependent
on a time exchange means that you are
opened up then to the possibility of breaking
through that ceiling and changing the limitations previously
imposed on your earning potential.
Now, when you trade your time for money, you
are providing a service or completing a task or
creating something, all of which you must physically be
present and spending your own time on.
When you move away from this model and start to earn
income in a way which does not require you to be
actively completing work beyond an initial amount of work for some
basic ongoing work to keep things up and running, then your
income can start to really take off.
Think of a direct comparison between two
types of workers in the same field.
The selfemployed graphic designer spends three days out
of the month creating digital products, one day
loading those products into their online shop and
two days setting up an automated marketing system.
In one week of work, they have created digital
products which they will never have to create again.
As long as they market them properly, those products will
sell and be automatically downloaded work which never has to
be done again, but will continue to make sales and
bring in income for years to come.
Because they don't have to create this work again,
they can focus on creating new designs and setting
those up to bring in more passive income.
They can increase the prices, they can increase
their marketing sales funnel or their advertising budget.
They can create content such as a YouTube channel
which funnels viewers in to make those sales.
And they can do so much more because they are
building these streams of passive income and the work put
into those products essentially never has to be done again.
Over time, they will be able to increase their
earning ceiling because they are not limited to the
constraints of time faced by traditional employment.
Now, if the same graphic designer was not selfemployed, was
not setting these things up, but instead was working as
an employee for another company, they would arrive at 09:00
A.m., they would leave at 05:00 p.m.
And they would take home a paycheck
trading time for money each day.
They might incur bonuses or increases over time.
They will essentially be stuck at a capped
income because they can't possibly work more.
We have 24 hours in a day and that is all.
Therefore, trading time for money means that you
automatically have that income ceiling imposed on you.
Now, there's a number of ways you can develop streams
of income that are not exchanges of time for money.
Rather, they are more passive income streams that
continue to generate income well after the initial
work to create the product was completed.
Some of the most profitable of these include
selling online courses, creating digital products such as
templates, PDF, educational materials and printables, building membership
sites and communities, and creating a monetize YouTube
channel, podcast or blog.
If we are constantly trying to keep our
heads above water and focusing only on the
day to day time for money exchange.
It makes it incredibly hard to build financial freedom.
While there is an immense value in the
security of a nine to five, job and
self employment can be a lot to handle.
I would recommend everyone seeking financial freedom
to consider ways that you can begin
to develop streams of more passive income.
This applies to for those of you that plan
on keeping your nine to five jobs or who
do plan on continuing to service clients in your
business, these can be built in the background in
small chunks as you continue your current workload.
Choose one passive income stream to begin
building slowly and stick with it.
What you can create in small chunks each
day can be built over time to a
product that will continue to earn your income
passively in the background for years to come.
Changing the way that we think about earning
money and taking steps to break through that
income ceiling can completely change your financial situation.