Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Building Wealth with Multiple Income Streams
2. Leveraging Your Time: Making Money with a Day Job
3. Leveraging Your Unique Skill Set: Freelancing and Consulting
4. Leveraging a Single Product: Creating a Profitable Online Store
5. Leveraging an Audience: Building a Following and Monetizing
6. Leveraging Your Money: Investing for Passive Income
7. Conclusion: Applying the Levers for Financial Success
Building Wealth with Multiple Income Streams
In today's video, I want to share a little secret with you about building wealth while minimizing risk. It's all about creating multiple income streams, something I discovered and implemented while working a full-time job as an engineering director. Looking back, I wish someone had guided me through this process when I was still working my 9 to 5. At that time, no one at my job openly discussed their financial strategies or how much they were truly earning. It felt like a well-kept secret.
The key to building wealth through multiple income streams is leveraging your resources and working smarter, not harder. It's like using a calculator to solve a math problem instead of relying on brute force. By finding the right tools and strategies to leverage, you can maximize your earning potential. In this article, I will walk you through four key money levers that I have personally used over the years to create multiple income streams.
Leveraging Your Time: Making Money with a Day Job
When you don't have any money to begin with, the most common way to make money is by leveraging your time. This is especially true if you enjoy your day job and find it financially rewarding. Working a day job allowed me to earn a healthy six-figure salary as an engineering director. It provided stability and valuable skills that I later used to build my online businesses.
Working for a company first can teach you how larger organizations create systems for automation and efficiency. Observing processes in companies like McDonald's, where orders are served like a well-oiled machine, can provide valuable insights. So, there's nothing wrong with working a day job as long as you are gaining useful skills along the way.
Leveraging Your Unique Skill Set: Freelancing and Consulting
Another way to create income streams is by leveraging your unique skill set. My wife, for example, used her embroidery skills to create personalized baby bibs, which she sold on eBay. This side hustle generated close to $11,000 a month. Similarly, I leveraged my computer knowledge to start a profitable Craigslist eBay arbitrage business. By breaking down computers into parts and selling them individually, I made around $1,500 a month.
If you have any special skills, you can create listings on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork and offer your services as a freelancer or consultant. Many people have achieved financial freedom by doing freelance writing or small coding projects for clients. However, it's important to note that trading time for money has its limitations, as there are only 24 hours in a day. Scaling this type of side hustle by hiring employees and creating an agency can be challenging.
Leveraging a Single Product: Creating a Profitable Online Store
Creating a single product and selling it repeatedly is another effective way to generate income. My wife and I discovered this lever when she started making custom baby bibs. However, the personalized nature of each bib limited the scalability of the business. That's when we decided to sell wedding handkerchiefs online. By sourcing them in bulk from a factory in China, we were able to automate the process and sell them under our own brand.
This online store became a significant source of income for us, generating over $100,000 in profit in the first year. Today, it's a seven-figure business that we've been running for 16 years. By offering personalized embroidery in a set format, we were able to fully automate the business using computer systems. If you're interested in starting your own online store, I invite you to sign up for my free 6-day e-commerce mini-course.
Leveraging an Audience: Building a Following and Monetizing
Building an audience is a powerful way to create income streams. After our online store became successful, I started a blog called "My Wife Quit Her Job" to document our journey. Initially, I didn't intend to make money from the blog, but it gained traction and people started asking me questions about starting their own online stores. That's when I discovered affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing involves recommending products you love and earning a commission when someone makes a purchase through your referral. It was an easy way to make money by promoting products I genuinely believed in. Eventually, people asked me to create an online course, which I initially had no intention of doing. However, the demand was high, and I ended up creating a comprehensive e-commerce course that has been running successfully for over 12 years.
Building an audience also led me to start a podcast and a YouTube channel, both
