How to Make Passive Income (And is it really 'passive') with Pat Flynn
I spoke with Pat Flynn - a father, husband, and entrepreneur who lives and works in San Diego, CA. He owns several successful online businesses and is a professional keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and YouTuber with 100M+ views. He also hosts the Smart Passive Income and AskPat podcasts, which have earned a combined total of over 80 million downloads, multiple awards, and features in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes. He is also an advisor to ConvertKit, Circle, and several other companies in the digital marketing arena.
He told me in an interview that the first thing people should know is that ‘passive’ income is “pretty much a myth.”
He says “It doesn't exist. In general nothing is 100% passive unless you are Bobby Bonilla from the Mets who gets a check from them every single year for doing nothing because of a really nice negotiation..
Pat explains that you need to
Pat explained to people years ago, as the interest in ‘passive income’ grew with the popularity rising on Tim Ferris’s, that “yes you can generate revenue without you putting hours in but only after you invest a ton of active time to create something that can automatically serve people over time and that does not happen overnight. So that's where Smart Passive Income came from. There are many different ways that you can do it, from software to affiliate marketing to writing articles to to whatever the case may be.”
Flynn emphasizes that it takes a lot of ‘active’ work first. Then “over time you can remove yourself from the equation of serving people. Maybe it's a software that takes its place. So this is how I'm able to generate revenue by selling books because I've written books and they've got placed on Amazon or on my website and at any moment in time. But it took time to write that book. It took time to set it up. It took time to put those systems into place.”
When we think of a business, Pat says “maybe the business starts with you, but then doesn't have to be you. Maybe you just end up managing a team or building an agency which again is not necessarily passive but it removes you from the delivering of service or the mechanism that's required to generate revenue.”