Last Monday, Brand Builder's Academy started.
A deep dive into mindset this week has revealed that I'm confident of my skills. Where I lack confidence is in my ability to present and market myself.
I also realised that a fear of failure, of showing up to an empty stadium, is quite literally laughable given my spectacular past failures. I realised that nothing bad happened when I failed. Sure, my ego took a bruising and my bank balance was savagely hit鈥攂ut it was all recoverable.
My chronic optimism always takes over and I focus on what I learn rather than what I lost and the failure itself.
And the best judge of future behaviour is past behaviour, right?
By doing the work, committing to showing up, continuing to believe in my skill set, I know I'll be OK. I don't have to worry about failure because if it does happen, I know I'll be OK.
For years I've invested a lot of time in trying to crack the passive income nut. I've written about those attempts in past posts.
I tried different kinds of affiliate marketing with little success.
I imagine if I'd invested that time in paid client projects I'd be financially better offer in the tens of thousands. But I did learn a LOT. There's that chronic optimism, again.
Perhaps the only vaguely successful passive income stream I've set up has been my drop shipping eCommerce store, Silk Interiors, which is now generating an average profit of just over $A1,000 per month. And that's far from passive.
The term 'passive income' has never sat well with me. We all know how much work goes into 'passive' income.
I've reframed the term 'passive income' to 'asset income'.
To me, passive income means to sit back, do nothing and watch the dollars roll in.
But there's a crap tonne of work that goes into setting something up so that the dollars will roll in, or more likely, trickle in. And then there's a whole lot more work that goes into maintaining what you've set up to ensure that trickle continues.
That's why I like the term 'asset income'. Using the word 'asset' feels like I'm creating something of value that will generate an income.
It's a somewhat subtle mindset shift, but it's working for me. Because I will create something of value, things that will help others.
I'm using the 8 weeks I'm investing in the BBA program to set up my new entity, The Smart Content Company.
My vision for The Smart Content Company is to provide a mix of products and services that cover the different budgets and level of willingness of business owners to do the work themselves.
I'll have a suite of services that have options to:
I see this as a way I can bring my skills to so many more people, those who ordinarily couldn't afford my services at my usual hourly rate.
I feel so enthused about creating content and assets that people will love, use and get great value from.
While I won't have that suite of products ready in 8 weeks, I will have the strategy and framework in place to make it happen.
This past week, The Monsta wasn't well and he had a few days off school. It was more the disturbed nights that affected me than the days of having him underfoot at home. Coupled with COVID-19 distress from soaring daily figures and anger at those COVID-infected people not self-isolating, plus general distress at the state of our society and the impact of casualisation of our workforce, I was tired, unfocused and finding it hard to get into the groove.
This means I have work to do this weekend to catch up so I don't miss already extended deadlines. But it's not like I can visit family and friends or do anything fun anyway, right? The lockdown net has extended and now even more people are caught under it. We're still out of the lockdown zone, for now. The figures in my local government area are climbing each day, so I think it's only a matter of time before we're officially locked down, too.
I prefer not to work on client projects on weekends because I know it means by next Wednesday or Thursday, I'll be creatively spent. I've blocked out Thursday in my calendar鈥攏o appointments and no deadlines.
I have 2 new projects coming in so far for August, securing another month of income.
One is for an existing client's website for a new brand they're launching. I secured that project via a Melbourne agency I've collaborated with over the past 7 or 8 months.
The other project is for a tech company project via Sydney-based agency. That lead came via a lovely, thoughtful copywriting colleague who referred them to me as she is at capacity for the next month.
