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💵 4 Passive Income Ideas That Make Me $75,966/Month in 2024! | Cody Berman ✌️
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💲Cody Berman shares his expert insights on passive income ideas that generate a whopping $75,966 per month! 😊
In this episode, Cody Berman discusses:
1️⃣ Top Passive Income Ideas: Discover how Cody uses digital products, real estate, investment returns, and affiliate marketing to build substantial monthly income.
2️⃣ Practical Advice for Beginners: Learn realistic expectations, strategies for balancing a full-time job, and how to achieve financial independence through passive income.
3️⃣ Cody's Personal Journey and Future Plans: Hear about Cody's path from young entrepreneur to financial independence, including his future goals and the role of his agency, Auros Agency.
🔗 Cody’s Links:
🔗 David's Links:
💰 Free Money Course
🍏 Forget About Money on Apple Podcast
🎧 Forget About Money on Spotify
📝 Episode Highlights:
💡 Cody's Top Passive Income Strategies
🚀 Practical Steps for Beginners
⏰ Balancing Side Hustles with a Full-Time Job
🌟 Cody’s Personal Journey and Financial Independence
#PassiveIncomeIdeas #CodyBerman #FinancialIndependence
🎧 Listen & Subscribe:
Don't forget to subscribe to "Forget About Money" for more insightful episodes featuring experts like Cody Berman. Hit the bell icon 🔔 to get notified of new episodes!
Disclaimer: The discussion is intended for general educational and entertainment purposes and is not tax, legal, or investment advice for any individual.
🕒 Timestamps/Chapters:
0:00 - 🎙️ Introduction to Passive Income Strategies
5:44 - 🚀 Cody's Journey into Passive Income
11:52 - 🌟 Success and Personal Growth
14:53 - 💰 Breakdown of Passive Income Streams
18:54 - 🌍 Impact of Passive Income on Others
22:05 - ⚠️ Challenges and Realistic Expectations
26:00 - 🔄 Balancing Side Hustles with a Full-Time Job
29:00 - ✅ Pros and Cons of Passive Income
29:56 - 🎯 Role in Portfolio and Life Goals
32:24 - 🎉 Rewarding Feelings and Overcoming Guilt
36:56 - 📈 Cody's Course and Digital Products
41:35 - 🎵 Closing Remarks and Musical Collaborations
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Transcript
Introduction to Passive Income Ideas
00:00:00
Speaker
What passive income ideas can you use to increase your monthly cash flow by thousands of dollars? We discuss four realistic options. Here we go. Welcome to the Forget About Money podcast, where we encourage you to take action today so that you can focus on what matters most to you.
Cody Berman's Journey and Expertise
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, I'm speaking with Cody Berman. Cody is an expert in passive income streams, having successfully built multiple income sources that allow him to earn a substantial monthly income with minimal ongoing effort. Welcome Cody. Thanks for having me, David. I'm excited for this.
00:00:36
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about four passive income streams that make Cody 40. See, my brain doesn't even want to admit that it's that much money, Cody.
How Much Does Cody Earn from Passive Income?
00:00:44
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about four passive income streams that make Cody $75,966 per month. His practical advice for beginners, and his personal financial independence journey and future plans. Cody, I've known you for, well, I think you were you're 28 now. I've known you, I think I met you when you were 21 or 22. And I will say that I have been completely impressed by watching your journey, not only your independence financial independence journey, but your personal journey. Congratulations on a recent marriage. Thank you. and
00:01:22
Speaker
just seeing you in the financial independence space, helping so many other people achieve what they want to achieve. And part of you doing part of how you do this is by teaching people how to use passive income to improve their financial lot in
Tim Ferriss's Influence on Cody
00:01:38
Speaker
life. Can you share your journey into the world of passive income? Like what made it what motivated you to start? Well, first of all, thank you for the kind words. Hopefully I can live up to that awesome intro. But what got me into passive income was growing up i would always think that if you made a lot of money per hour that meant you are rich so i had doctors in the family i had lawyers in the family cousins and they made ah two hundred dollars an hour i'm like oh my gosh that's so much money. It wasn't until i read the forward work week but tim ferris where he just flip that whole paradigm on its head.
00:02:07
Speaker
And I realized that the richest people don't trade their time for money at all. The richest people build up passive income streams, whether they're using their time, their money, their energy, and those passive income streams pay them whether or not they're working on them. So after I read that book, my whole world shifted and I focused all my energy on building these passive income streams. What were some of the very first passive income streams that you created and how successful were they?
First Venture: Disc Golf Manufacturing
00:02:32
Speaker
Very first one was a disc golf manufacturing company. And it might not sound passive at all, but we had built pretty good systems and we had everything streamlines mode, placing an order online. We wouldn't touch it. A fulfillment center would send the disc out.
00:02:45
Speaker
That was probably the first one that I started getting into the online stuff a little bit more. Some blogging, digital products was the first truly, truly passive income stream that started going pretty well. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that a lot today, but those are probably some of the early ones. So if somebody clicked on this YouTube video or was listening to this podcast, they did so because the title is four passive income ideas that make me $75,966 per month.
Cody's Main Income Streams
00:03:13
Speaker
Now, outside looking in, that sounds almost unbelievable. Can you break down the passive income streams you currently use and how much you make from each?
00:03:21
Speaker
So the four big ones I have right now is digital products. That's the biggest and digital products, meaning printables, eBooks, online courses, memberships. So just everything under the digital product, digital offer umbrella that brings in net about 60 grand per month. The next biggest one is my real estate portfolio, which is a mixture of long-term rentals and short-term rentals, aka Airbnb's. That brings in about $7,000 per month. I have about $1.5 million dollars invested in the stock market, so using the 4% rule that we all know and love.
00:03:52
Speaker
And kind of extrapolating that out, I can quote unquote bring in or my portfolio appreciates by about $4,966 per month, hence the 966 number that David just mentioned. And then I do about $4,000 per month in affiliate marketing. Now, can you go into each of those a little bit deeper and just explain a little bit more what it is you're actually doing to get this kind of income?
Success with Digital Products on Etsy
00:04:17
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So let's start at the top. So digital products. So where I get started and when I mentioned before, when I first started selling digital products, I was mostly just selling holiday gifts and ideas and games on Etsy. And so I actually got my first big break on Etsy selling digital products. So.
00:04:34
Speaker
I remember one week I'd created all these Valentine's Day printables. I was actually skiing in Lake Tahoe, so going back to the first time I experienced true passive income, I was with actually a bunch of FinCon folks. I i was on the ski lift with Nick Loper of South Also Nation, if anyone would assist that podcast. And my phone was blowing up, and by lunchtime, I had over $100 in my Etsy shop, like, what's going on? This is so cool. And a couple of my Valentine's Day printables. Printables are basically just digital downloads, digital files that I create on ah a free program like Canva. I list in my Etsy shop, someone goes in, they buy it, Etsy delivers the file to them automatically and I get the money. So by the end of this week, I'd made over $700 from printables that I had created the month before. Hadn't worked on them all week because again, I was skiing every day in Lake Tahoe with this group of financial independence nerds.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I was like, this is so cool. This is like the first time I've experienced true. Make money while you sleep, make money while you ski, passive income. And since then, it's just, as you can imagine, I doubled down hard once I had that success. And it turned into multiple shops, like selling on and Shopify. Then we launched an online course in a community. Now we have this like massive template library that we're selling as well. So it's kind of become its whole a whole beast of its own. And now we have a community of actually over 20,000 digital product sellers. Some people who have had success that's even surpassed mine, which is cool and humbling to say. So right now it's 2024. What do you see as the most legitimate and profitable ways to make passive income online? Because we see we're inundated with ads by this course, by that course, you can get rich quick doing this or that. What do you think since you're in the trenches with it and you're seeing real success stories, what do you think is the most viable, realistic option for most people?
00:06:17
Speaker
I think any option that promises you outside success in a month or two is absolute BS. You can have success with any of these things. Like once they get a bad rep, there's drop shipping, there's Amazon FBA selling digital products on Amazon and Etsy. The gurus that are crouching in front of the Lambos saying that you're going to make 40K in your first month, don't listen to them. but It's honestly, it's just, you have to have grit. You have to be willing to fail. You have to be willing to iterate because your first creations, your first things that you're selling, the first things that you're doing online are not going to be good. They're going to be terrible. Mine were terrible. And I just had to live with that for the first couple of months until I started to see success. So I guess the long winded answer here is any of these can work. Like there's a reason why these gurus are probably promoting these things. Like there are success stories. There's people that have made it work, but you just got to realize that you do have to put in the work.
00:07:06
Speaker
There's not just like one best magic side hustle or everybody would be doing it. There's success to be found in all these different online side hustles. Just don't get the wool pulled over your eyes and think that you're going to make 40K in your first month by listening to someone crouching in front of a Lambo on an Instagram ad. Okay. So we're just going to show up on the screen now, Cody and your Lamborghini. Let's wait for that. Okay. All right. Moving on with the interview. Etsy is a very popular platform for passive income, as you mentioned, and you've seen a lot of people get success through that, including yourself, of course. Can you give us some insights on how to successfully create passive income on Etsy specifically? The cool thing about Etsy is that you don't need an audience. So similar to Amazon, if you're selling digital products, if you put a product on there that is well researched, good SEO, search engine optimization, you looked up the right keywords, you have the right products for the person that's searching for that thing,
00:08:00
Speaker
The platform is going to deliver the buyers straight to your doorstep. Same thing with Etsy. So with digital products, I'll use a bunch of keyword research tools. We don't have to get into the weeds here. But basically my job is to figure out what people are typing into the Etsy search bar, creating that thing, making sure that it has all the features. It's the perfect title, the perfect description, all the things that they want. Listing on Etsy. And if I do my job right, Etsy is going to show that listing to the buyer. therefore making me passive income. And so like I mentioned with that Valentine's Day story, I've had weeks where I created a product, a ton of people wanted it, especially around seasonal products. That's another pro tip here. If you target seasonal printables, seasonal digital products, you can see a ton of success because the search volume during those times is a thousand X, 10,000 X. Like if you start selling, if you're listening to this podcast around Christmas time, my God, go and make a bunch of Christmas digital products and you'll see yourself skyrocket.
00:08:51
Speaker
Are there any new trends in the broader passive income space that you're particularly excited about or see a lot of potential in?
AI in Enhancing Passive Income
00:08:59
Speaker
AI is the elephant in the room. And I think a lot of people are trying to see how they can use AI to discover some new side hustle or some new passive income stream. What I'm seeing is that AI is just helping those who are already willing to put in the work get farther ahead. What AI is doing in my eyes is widening the gap between the doers and the do-notters. That's ah that's even a noun. Because there's so many ways you can just accelerate your pace of work by using an AI tool for ideation for helping you generate a description for helping you. Edit things like there's so many use cases now for AI so i know you ask me what my what the side hustle is that i think has the most prospects moving forward.
00:09:36
Speaker
There's not like one in particular. I just think those who are using AI to their advantage with any of the side hustles we talked about today, or like digital products or any of the ones I'm mentioning, they're going to have a huge leg up on the people who aren't. And of these different income streams, which have the best synergy together? like If you have one type established, does it help tackle the next type? And if so, what are those and how can they work together?
From Side Hustle to Multiple Opportunities
00:09:59
Speaker
Okay, so this is where all my worlds collide. So if you can have outside success in any particular side hustle, so much so that you have your friends, your family asking you, David, how the heck are you making $10 an hour a month with Amazon FBA? How are you making $10 an hour a month with printables on Etsy? how are you Once you get to that point, now you have demand for people who want to learn from you.
00:10:18
Speaker
So you can still do the thing, because obviously you don't want to be the expert who's just spewing BS and doesn't actually do the thing and make money with the thing. But now you can extrapolate that. You can maybe sell templates to those people. You could have a course, you could have a membership, you could do one-on-one coaching. So if you do get really good at one thing and you're making a ton of money with any of these online side hustles, then you can kind of extrapolate that out into a bigger operation. And you have done that. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so that's exactly what happened is I started to have success selling printables and other digital products on Etsy and Shopify. People ask me, they're like, hey, can you teach me how to do this? I didn't want to sit on Zoom calls all day, one on one Zoom calls with friends and family and random people online who saw me doing this. So we ended up just basically putting all of our material into one central place, into a into a course, into a community, basically just a brain dump like, hey, here's how we did it. Avoid the failures that we hit, like try to avoid the obstacles.
00:11:14
Speaker
like you This is how we do keyword research. This is how we do product ideation. This is how we actually create the product. And then we just put that out to the world and like we're like, if people want it, sure. If not, well, we can at least help those original people, the friends and family who want our help. And since then, it's like I said, it's been gangbusters. We have 20,000 people in our community. Now you've started this entrepreneurial venture.
Advice for Beginners in Side Hustles
00:11:35
Speaker
ah you You talked about your frisbee golf, disc golf. thats sorry yeah yeah and And that's what you were doing when i very first when I first met you. And I think everybody was impressed by that, but then you went on to do a lot of other great things. And of course, your net worth grew along with that. So you've been in the space for what, nine, 10 years now, as far as being an entrepreneur and thinking about how to build and create and then share all of their great knowledge with
00:12:01
Speaker
people who want to learn from you if you were ah giving advice to a beginner and you had six months to get them to two thousand dollars per month what advice would you give. right I'm glad you asked so specifically i think with two thousand dollars per month you can do almost anything and do two thousand dollars per month what i would say though to. early Cody or someone who's yeah early in their career or wants to start David but but or is be willing to fail and fail often because a lot of people, they'll get stuck on one side hustle or one idea and they'll try it and then it won't work out for whatever reason. And then they're like, oh, this doesn't work. South hustling is not for me. I just wasted so much time. The people who succeed are the people who pivot. So back to my story, when I first started selling digital products, I think it was crickets for the first couple of months.
00:12:51
Speaker
like I had poured hundreds of hours into this out hustle with almost no return. Same thing with blogging, same thing with podcasting for me as well. And I could have just gave up and said, this sucks. This is never going to make this work. I've already spent a hundred hours on this. I've only made two bucks. of This is the worst ah ROI ever, but instead I stuck with it and I, you know, I certain things would work and I'd be like, okay, this worked. I'm going to keep on doing this. This didn't work. I'm going to stop doing that. Honestly, dude, like any side hustle you can think of. if you can If you can just be willing to fail, fail fast and then pivot and ideate and think of a new idea, a new strategy, you can get to $2,000 per month with literally like any passion or hobby. I'm i glad you set the bar. It might sound pompous and I'm saying low, but I think $2,000 per month is a great so great ah goal for most people to get to and I think it's achievable with almost anything.
00:13:37
Speaker
But what specifically would you... If somebody's listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm excited. Cody seems like a legit credible guy. I want to go make $2,000 in six months. am Am I going to start an Etsy? What am I doing? That is completely up to you. I hate saying, do this specific sound hustle because I couldn't be that guy. I have a digital products course and community and have had a lot of success with it. I could say, yeah, go do digital products. but If you like doing other stuff, if you like YouTube, go all in on YouTube. You can make money on YouTube with affiliate marketing, with your own products, with sponsorships. If you like editing video, go be a video editor. If you like driving for Uber, if you just love having your foot on the pedal, go drive for Uber. And you'll figure out like the surge times to make the most money. And there is literally a way to get a 1% edge in any sod hustle. So I hate being the guy to say, do this specific sod hustle. Most of the time, those guys just seem like scamsters to me when it's like my sod hustle or die or or bust.
00:14:29
Speaker
It's like there's there's so many ways to get the financial independence. There's so many ways to build passive income. Lean into the one that seems attractive to you because the one that is not going to last is the one that you hate doing. So if you listen to me and you're like, all right, I'm going to do digital products and you start doing it and you hate it, you're not going to last very long. You can only do something for the money for so long before you just want to quit. So do something that you're somewhat passionate about, somewhat interested in, and make it work. So your digital products, your printables, your courses, your memberships, they bring in about $60,000 a month for you net, but you make about $75,966 per month in passive income. Let's talk about those other three sources of passive income, and which are
00:15:14
Speaker
real estate, your investment returns, and your affiliate marketing and sponsorships. Can you go through each of those and just quickly talk about the type of effort that you're putting into these and the types of return you're getting from them?
Effort and Returns in Various Income Streams
00:15:30
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So real estate first, I mentioned at the beginning, I have a long-term rental portfolio and then I have two Airbnb's as well. So top line gross revenue, those bring in on average, very variable because the Airbnb is crush it in the summer, more crickets in the winter, but on average, about $20,000 top line per month.
00:15:49
Speaker
Out of that $27, Take Home is about $7,000, so these are leveraged. I didn't just buy these properties outright. They have mortgages on them. We have 11 long-term units and two Airbnb's, as I mentioned, and yeah that's pretty much it. i mean it's It's just the regular expenses you would expect. It's obviously mortgage expense, but then just property maintenance and upkeep and ah the plowing, the landscaping. We're in Massachusetts. That's why we have plowing. I know, David, you might not know much about that over in sunny San Diego. hey I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania. I definitely know about shoveling snow. Not fun. Not fun at all. But yeah, so at the end of the day, we net about $7,000 per month from real estate. The other one that's more, I'll get into the index fund returns in a second because I wouldn't quite consider those passive income because I'm not taking distributions, but affiliate marketing and sponsorships.
00:16:37
Speaker
That is through Gold City Ventures, which is the digital products business that I own. So we'll do affiliate marketing like Canva, for example. That was a program that I mentioned. We love Canva. I use Canva every day. We plug Canva in our course, in our YouTube videos, and all of our content. When someone signs up for Canva through our link, we get we get a little kickback. That's affiliate marketing in a nutshell. um We do some sponsorships as well. And I do sponsorships on my podcast, The Financial Independent Show. And we do some affiliate marketing there as well for personal finance tools and other things. And then the last one is the index fund returns. And I know you mentioned the 4,966. And sixty six if people are like, what the heck? How do you possibly come up with that number? What we did was I have about $1.5 million dollars invested in the stock market. There's this little thing called the 4% rule, which states that
00:17:21
Speaker
On average or you can assume that you could live on about four percent of your portfolio portfolio in perpetuity so you take one point five million four percent of that is sixty thousand. Divided by twelve is about the four thousand nine hundred and sixty six i think david you might use to slightly and lower number than one point five like one point four nine million i think was a number he used. So you get that four nine six six, but like I mentioned, I'm not actually taking those distributions out because I'm, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm 28. I'm not taking any of these stock market investments out until probably in a couple of decades. So I'm just going to keep letting them ride, keep letting them compound. And as that number gets bigger, which is a cool part of compound interest in investing.
00:18:00
Speaker
as that 1.5 million number gets bigger, those monthly and those annual returns get bigger as well. So I always like to joke, I'm like, how can someone with a billion dollars ever run out of money? Because you have a billion dollars invested, like you're a Warren Buffett, you're an Elon Musk. Let's say you get 5% returns, so which is lower than the stock market. 5% returns, you could take out $50 million dollars a year and spend it however you want. It says the power of compound interest is insane. And once you start working with these larger and larger numbers, it just, it seems so much more worth it than when you have a hundred bucks invested and you're like, Oh man, I only made, you know, I only made $5 this year. this This kind of stinks. So we talked about how you're using passive income in your life, how you're creating it, how you're building your overall net worth, and that you're helping many, many other people do the same thing.
00:18:47
Speaker
How have you seen lives change and finances improve for those who have put in the work to create passive income streams? This is the best part of my quote unquote job is impacting other people and seeing their success. So I'll start with digital products because I probably have the most stories that I can fish out from there. But we've had some people, we had one woman who's been featured now on CNBC. She was featured on a local news station. She was featured on MSNBC. She was featured on all these different places. She quit her job. as an accountant and travel the country with her family and replace her full-time accountant income she was 39 or 40 years old so she was a pretty esteemed account and i get a long tenure is a master's in accounting replaced her income with digital products on etsy specifically crazy another woman
00:19:36
Speaker
On the side while she was working her day job made a hundred and fifty grand on etsy this is what i was talking about students out just outshining me i'm like okay that's way better than i did my first year my first second or my second year. um We've had other students who are covering their mortgage we have other students who are just covering the grocery money and it just. The relief that we see, because people are dropping comments in like the Facebook group all the time, the relief that we see like, you know, I've been a stay at home mom forever, or I've never had a status before, or I'd never thought I could do this. And then you see them making 500, 1000, in some cases, $150,000. It's insane. um So it's it's super rewarding. That's why I like to give back and kind of teach the things that I'm learning. And I'm i'm constantly learning to I'm in learning mode. So I am I'm actually in the middle of something right now where
00:20:20
Speaker
I'm doing a challenge because a lot of people be like, well, Cody, of course, you're going to continue to see outside success like you were early to the market or, you know, you already have so many products. Of course, you're going to be able to earn way more than I can. So I'm actually doing this experiment where I'm starting an Etsy shop from scratch anonymous and not even letting anyone in our course in our community know. And I'm seeing how fast I can get it to $1,000 per month. I actually just started this last week. This is half the press. Don't tell anybody. um But it's going to be a cool, a cool little case study. It's like, this this is still a viable sod hustle. like This is still something that can work. And just because I have all this quote unquote clout, and I've been doing this for a while, like i'm I'm starting fresh, not and not letting anybody know this is associated with me and seeing how fast I can get to that milestone. So yeah, and it's it's beens it's been a lot of fun.
00:21:03
Speaker
And then obviously i'll like I'll share all the learnings that I have during this experiment with everyone in the course and see if there's anything that I learn as a quote unquote new guy starting an Etsy shop. I have to get you back on. for months so Talk about that. That's gonna be great. Yeah. And I do like that approach because many times if we've seen some success and something that we've done, we almost Look, in retrospect, we know all the work that we put into it. We know all the factors that affected it, but those factors change either for like somebody with a different personality or maybe the environment's different at that time. So to go back and try to re-achieve something in and in a potentially new environment. And I think that not only gives more credibility to
00:21:48
Speaker
those who you advise, but it allows you to get another belief in yourself that, you know, if push comes to shove, you can, you can see success if from ground zero again. So good on you. And I look forward to seeing the results and story from that. Appreciate it. What are some of the common challenges or cons that beginners should be aware of when pursuing passive income?
Starting Slow in Passive Income Journeys
00:22:12
Speaker
that it doesn't happen fast. It is the hockey stick approach. I know that we were chatting before we hit record here and I've been sharing my personal finance journey publicly for six years at this point. I started my podcast six years ago and back then the numbers really weren't flashy and everyone's rooting for me and they're like, Cody, this is awesome. Like you're that 22 year old kid. I know you were like, Cody, how old are you now? You're 24. I'm like, no, I'm 28. I wish I could stop my aging like that, but it's been a while since I've been in this game.
00:22:41
Speaker
But the reason I'm mentioning this is people will see that early those early numbers and they'll be rooting for me and thinking this is awesome. And then they'll see my numbers today. And if they don't know me from before, they just think I'm bragging or they're like, why is this dude sharing these numbers? It's like, cause I like keeping it real. Like I like the fact that I've, I've documented the entire journey. So you can see when I was making $1,200 per month from my sod hustles and now it's upwards of 75,000. And it's like I said, it's just, it's hockey stick. So it didn't go from, you know, it wasn't a linear path. It wasn't like 12,000 and then 20 and then 40 and then 60. It was like, You know twelve and then five thousand and then twenty thousand it's it's crazy but you just get on this linear hockey stick curve and if you're doing the right things and you just continue to focus on the inputs not the outputs the output just happened naturally and that's what i really tried to focus on is i try not to measure myself by any financial milestones or income goals or anything like that i just have like a daily task list.
00:23:36
Speaker
And if I do all of those, I won the day. It's not whether I made certain amount of money or whether i you know some outcome happened that I can't control. It's if I control the inputs and I did all the things that I set out to do this day, this week, this month, then I won. Yeah, I think that's a great representation of the overall philosophy of don't necessarily have goals for sure, but don't necessarily focus on the achieving that goal, but focus on the habits that you believe will result in that goal or objective. And and it seems like that's what you're doing with your time every single day.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah, I had a podcaster ask me recently, he's like, I had this goal of getting, I think it was a million downloads. And I'm like, well, how about you don't focus on getting a million downloads and you focus on getting, yeah I think he did daily episodes. I'm like, focus on getting five awesome episodes out every single week and check that off. That is your win for the week. It's not some arbitrary number that you set out to get. And once you change that and focus start focusing on the inputs, the outputs just happen. If you spend a lot of time making sure the inputs are as good as they can possibly be. So if somebody is listening to this and they're they're all in or though they've already started doing some income streams or you know trying to build them, what realistic expectations can beginners have in terms of time and effort to actually start generating the passive income? If you don't have a lot of money, if the resources that you have to the resources you have to spend are time and energy,
00:24:57
Speaker
you will be spending a lot of it at the beginning like i mentioned with my digital products journey with my blogging journey with my podcasting journey online course for everything everything that i've done i have front loaded the work like a crazy amount of work and looking on paper for those first couple months or couple weeks depending on how long it takes me to monetize the ry the return on investment is abysmal it's like i'm making five cents an hour and spending a hundred hours making two bucks or twenty bucks it's it doesn't make sense on paper but i know that there is some kind of an outsized return on the other end of that so that's what i'd say. Don't expect to help don't expect to be making twenty dollars an hour or fifty dollars an hour right off the bat with whatever is how you want to start if you want to be a passive income side hustle you could go and start trading your time for money and that's totally fine there's nothing wrong with that you could go do one on one coaching you could become a freelancer.
00:25:45
Speaker
You can make money with those, but I know specifically, David, today we're talking about passive income and those do take time and energy or money. If you have money, you can skip the time and energy part. You can hire other people to build these things for you. But if you already have the money, then you might not be as interested in starting a passive income stream in the first place. To summarize those points, a beginner can expect to invest a significant amount of time upfront, gradual growth and compounding effects over time, but not immediate. And then just consistent effort and patience is key. You just keep going. That's it. That's it. That's the formula.
00:26:20
Speaker
I think a lot of people in the side hustle sphere, in the financial independence of sphere, in the fitness of sphere will think that it's a couple big moves that make all the difference. Like a lot of people will think that's why so many people play the lottery. They think that winning the lottery is somehow going to solve all their financial problems. But unfortunately, that's just not how it works. Like if you don't know how to manage $10,000, you're definitely not going to know how to manage $10 million. dollars so And so it's the people who make these small incremental gains every day, no matter what you're doing, that you can't correct a whole year of non-exercising, just exercising for 24 hours one day. Like you got to split it up. You got to have those consistent, that consistent weekly, that daily routine. And over time you'll see results. It's not the big things, it's the small things that compound over time.
00:27:04
Speaker
If I have a 9 to 5, a normal W2 that takes up my daily time and energy, let's do stereotypically, a Monday through Friday, and then I'm hearing something like this, and or I'm trying to get additional income, you know something to help build legacy, something to help me achieve financial independence sooner in life or at some point in life, how do I balance these side hustles with the full-time job?
Managing Side Hustles with a Full-Time Job
00:27:27
Speaker
What strategies do you recommend for managing and balancing this effectively? So first, I want to just say that your balance will probably be a little bit out of kilter. When I was doing this, I worked in corporate America for seven months and I had a two hour commute to Boston. I would wake up at 5 a.m., start working my sod hustles, hop on the train, work on my sod hustles on my laptop. It's an hour 20 train ride, whole train ride. Sometimes I don't listen to this boss. Sometimes I would work on my sod hustles while I was at work.
00:27:56
Speaker
Then i would work on my hot husstles the whole train ride home and then after i go to the gym and eat dinner i usually work my muscles for another hour i was putting in four to five hours a day on top my day job now that might sound insane i was in my twenties i didn't have kids i understand that there's people in different situations but you just might have to let things give a little bit you might not be able to watch that netflix show you might have to wake up an hour earlier you are gonna have to make sacrifices if you right now you're like i don't have any time for this i'm sorry you will have to make sacrifices. On a tactical front, though, a strategy that I've used that's been incredibly effective for me is called time blocking. So if I have 30 minutes, I will set my watch. I will. I have a timer app on my computer. I'll just set it for whatever amount of time I put my phone in the other room locked. I don't let myself do anything other than the thing that I set out to do for that time block. And that has worked incredibly well because if you have your phone next to you, just scrolling on Instagram, scrolling on TikTok, looking on Facebook, and all of a sudden 20 minutes go by.
00:28:50
Speaker
those 20 minutes could have been used to push your passive income streams forward. You really don't need that much time. Like you can do a lot with the 10 minute pockets you might find yourself with throughout the day. Is it worth it, Cody? What are the major pros and cons of dedicating all of this time to building passive income streams? The con is the time and energy at the beginning, but quite honestly, and I know that I have a bit of an abnormal story. I don't expect people to follow my path exactly. but I didn't have to sacrifice that hard for that long. I would say I had sacrificed really hard for maybe two to three years. so And then after that, I had reached financial independence, which I know that sounds crazy. That's just the true numbers. That's how long it took me from like 22 to 25. If you want it to be a little longer, like don't do the five hours, you know, between before and after work that I was doing, you can maybe do two or three, but your journey might take you longer to escape corporate America or hit financial independence or build passive income streams to some certain level, whatever your goals might be.
00:29:45
Speaker
But it was absolutely worth it, man. 100% worth it. Like three years out of what's the average life expectancy, 76 to hit financial independence and never have to worry about money again is well, well worth it in my book.
Cody's Passion for Business
00:29:57
Speaker
What role does your passive income play in your overall portfolio, your net worth growth, your life goals? Do you see yourself as this temporary in 20 years or 10 years or five years? Are you going to sell it all and retire on a beach somewhere? How does this fit into your life design? This is a fantastic question and one that I love to answer.
00:30:17
Speaker
So and obviously the number in the thumbnail of this YouTube video that we've been spouting the $75,966, that is way more than I need to live on a monthly basis. So what I'm doing with that money is I'm just reinvesting 80% to 90% of it every single month into the stock market, into more real estate investments. The end goal though, I love the game of business. like I've kind of just fallen in love with this. I could stop all these things tomorrow and just take the money that I'm getting from my real estate and my index funds and retire. like i I consider um i considered myself financially independent at 25 when I was bringing in about $3,000 from real estate passively or semi-passively per month, about four or five hours of work.
00:30:59
Speaker
and my index funds, which at the time I had $500,000 invested using that fancy 4% rule we were talking about earlier, I could live on about $20,000 per year or a little less than $2,000 per month from that. So combining those, I'm like, okay, I have over $5,000 per month in mostly passive income. My expenses at the time were like $2,000 a month. Now they're a little bit higher. But at that point, I consider myself financially independent. So all the stuff that I've been accumulating, all the things i've been doing all the things that I've been doing since then are just gravy. It's because i love the game i love figuring out new marketing strategies i love like the thing i was just talking about with the etsy challenge that's fun to me i love doing stuff like that it's not because i have to it's because i like teaching other people i like challenging myself i like getting to the next level. An analogy i like to use is like okay so my net worth is approaching three million i'm about two point nine right now again i'm super transparent with numbers my income is.
00:31:48
Speaker
seven figure income and people are like, well, isn't that enough? Aren't you just going to stop? It's like, well, if my goal is to run a six minute mile and I get the six minutes, am I just going to continue to run a six minute mile for the rest of my life? Or when I want to get to five 55 or five 50 or five 45, or at least try for it without killing myself. Like if I had to sacrifice my family and friends to get to that five 45, then forget about it I'm not going to try, but if it's just a little bit more of incremental effort and it's fun for me, then why not? Why not? Why not get to that next milestone? so Honestly, yeah, I'm glad you asked this question. That's why I do it. It's just for the love of the game. It's like it's a sport to me at this point. I love the game of business.
Fulfillment through Helping Others Succeed
00:32:25
Speaker
How would you classify or categorize the types of rewarding feeling that you get from doing this, one being helping other people succeed and the other watching your net worth grow? Or is there some other category that you put weight into to determine your own level of success and desire to move forward? There's definitely a lot to be said about seeing another person succeed. I feel like there's just something in you that It just feels so much better. It's like, you know, you could donate a thousand dollars per month to some cause that you never actually see the people or your neighbor's house burned down to fire and you give them 500 bucks. Giving your neighbor the money is going to feel better even though you might have a broader impact but without a thousand dollars to buy mosquito nets in Ghana or something. You know what I mean? So I love the feeling of like seeing
00:33:09
Speaker
a singular person, seeing their outcome, seeing their seeing them talk about, hey, I was able to do this for my family. Hey, I was able to take this trip. Hey, I was able to quit my day job. I love that. That's definitely a huge part of it. The net worth part, it's kind of the outputs thing, right? It's it's cool. like My net worth is just continuing to climb. My income is continuing to climb because I'm focusing so much on the inputs. It's like if I can continue to change people's lives, they're going to tell other people about me, the things that I'm doing. They're going to then like link to me and just talk about me. I might get more people in my community, in my orbit, at least more opportunities. It's kind of a self-fulfilling cycle is the more that I focus on helping other people the more that it comes back to me which is amazing and might sound counterintuitive to some people when I think about what I could be doing to earn additional income.
00:33:53
Speaker
maybe for not as much effort as one would expend in a traditional W-2. For some reason I feel, I don't know if it's guilt, I don't know if it's, it's like, do I deserve that? Do I, and I kind of get caught up and I and i feel like that's, Maybe I'm just using that as an excuse not to take those first steps or second steps or third steps or whatever it is. But there's something that's saying, you know, David, you didn't really earn that or that's not or your effort isn't shouldn't result in so much. I don't know. I personally get hung up on that a little bit. And maybe it's a philosophical philosophical thing. Maybe it's how I grew up. Maybe it's
00:34:31
Speaker
you know, how you weigh certain values in the world. Do you get hung up on that at all? or And do you know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, I've definitely faced this. And especially when Gold City Ventures, the digital products company started growing. Once we started hiring people, we hired experts in our Facebook group, we started hiring people to do admin work for us, we started hiring all these things out. And at this point, I could probably shut my laptop for six months a year. And not that much would change, which is kind of crazy and almost makes me feel like you said guilty. It's like, how am I taking home this much money when I've outsourced a lot of the work to other people? It just doesn't feel right. But I think at some point I just had to get over that hurdle. Like this is how businesses are built. You can only do so much as a one man or one woman army. Like if your goal is impact,
00:35:14
Speaker
and you're just a solo operator you can only do so much like at some point you're gonna have to scale at some point you're gonna have to outsource at some point you're not gonna be doing every single part of the business you're gonna have to be okay with that you're gonna have to be okay with giving up the range you're gonna have to be okay with maybe playing a more CEO ceo role not the master of all trades or Or is it the jack of all trades, master of none? That's what I was trying to say there. So I think for me, I definitely struggled a lot at the beginning. And I definitely i definitely still do get income income guilt. And sometimes I'll get weird comments from like friends or family. But you just know that's part of the package. And i I hope that doesn't discourage other people for going after this. Because if you are someone who does want to do a lot of good, like I donate a percentage of my monthly income every single month, it feels awesome. and
00:35:58
Speaker
It's kind of like, I don't even see the money. So sometimes sometimes I forget about it because it just gets automatically c siphoned out of my bank account. But I know that I'm i'm like doing some good with this money. And even if you don't, that's another thing. I guess I don't want i don't want people to feel pressured into that either. like You can do whatever you want with the money that you earn. If you put in the work, you build the systems. You don't have to donate either. If you want to just keep the money for yourself, fine. i'm not I'm not here to police you and tell you what to do with your money. But if you have a goal, if you have a mission, if you want to retire your family, if your mom's been working her whole life to give you the life that you've had and she's still working and you can You can do this for her i got going to go and earn more money than you know someone might think you should earn and and buy your house and take her on a vacation like there's just so many things you can do so many doors that open up. Once you are willing to expand your income i know that sounds pompous willing to expand your income but it really is it's it's the daily habits like it's it's like working out it's just like ah taking those small consistent daily actions and eventually like i said the output is gonna happen because of the inputs that you're doing every day.
00:36:56
Speaker
Thanks, Cody. I appreciate you saying that. Feel better? Maybe I'll get there. Let me just start an Etsy shop and I'll let you know. it Sounds good. So if you're listening to this, I want to vouch for Cody a little bit here. I've known him since he was much younger than he is now. I first met him at a camp five, I believe it was Southeast in Florida. And at that time, I don't think the world knew who Cody Berman was, but I will say after that weekend, at least in the financial independence community, people begin to know who he was. Let me tell you a story. So during camp five at night, they were doing a ah podcast recording.
00:37:35
Speaker
And they had a panel of known personalities up there asking questions. Cody was sitting in the audience. I do not remember the question. I do not remember what we were talking about exactly. I just remember this young guy gets up, walks to the front of the room, gets to the mic. And from that, for the next few minutes, everybody's jaw just dropped. From our perspective, we had, he was articulate. He had wisdom beyond his years. It was extremely impressive. And in that crowd was a guy by the name of Doug Nordman, and he was sitting next to me. And I remember we just leaned over to each other and said, how do we buy stock in Cody Berman?
00:38:15
Speaker
No matter what it costs, I want to buy stock in Cody Berman because this guy's going to do big things. And here we are and six years later and you have done big things and you'll, and you have a great spirit in the space. And at large, I know, you know, this podcast is specific financial independence kind of focus money focused, but your effort and energy that you're putting out into the world code is helping so many people. and it's brightened up my life. So I really do appreciate it. um I know I started a site called Biology many, many years ago, 2018.
00:38:48
Speaker
And periodically, probably at least twice a year, you and I either get on a phone call or go back and forth over text or I ask you to do something. I remember you even got in and helped me do some back end of work on that site. So to you, it might mean nothing or you know something very small. But for me, who don't who I didn't have that technical knowledge and you were willing to just use your time when you could be out making another thousand dollars a month in passive income. ah You put your effort towards me and my endeavors ah with zero in return. So I really do appreciate that. And this is a lot about your character. Appreciate you, David. I did not expect to get this praise on this podcast today. He made my day. Yeah. Let's talk about your course, Cody. So if somebody's, you know, somebody listened to this whole podcast and like, Oh, I know what's coming. I feel it coming. I've Googled his name already. I know we sell something. All right. Let's talk about what you're doing out there to help people, Cody, and how somebody can actually use the products that you have put together to improve their own life.
00:39:43
Speaker
Well, I don't want people to get that slimy course guy feeling, first of all. So if you are interested in digital products, go and watch. I recorded with my business partner Julie. We have an hour long free workshop. So go do that. If you are still interested, we do have an entire course and basically it's called the ePrintables course. It takes you A to Z. from product ideation to creating the products to marketing the products to then want to see some success how to multiply that success in a nutshell. And we have a bunch of templates and we do new product ideation every month with you again going off going back to the seasonal thing like every single. Every single holiday when there's something that's new that's trending or typically provide templates so that all of our students can use those and then.
00:40:24
Speaker
customize them and then put them in their own shops. so So like I said, we've had some amazing so success stories come out of there. We continue to iterate and make the program better when things change. We've recorded videos, so it's always fresh. And yeah, man, if people are interested, they can go check it out. It's at goldcityventures.com. And like I said, it's a free workshop. Don't have to pay anything for it. Go watch that. I don't want you to think I'm just some coarse guy. So hopefully you can get some free value there. Yeah, Cody, and I'll put that link in the show notes of the YouTube video as well as the podcast. Also, people can can just scroll down and take a look and click on that and watch that hour-long video and then determine determine whether or not they want to move forward. Cody, thank you so much. Thanks for being, I guess, a friend. I guess you're a friend. You're a friend and an associate. and yeah
00:41:07
Speaker
Oh, and, uh, at some point we need to do a musical. and um Wow. I just thought that was like a period. We need to do musical i'm not playing a musical Uh, at some point we should actually, you know, when you're not doing the trillion other things that you're doing, we should get back into, I know, I know you you have a core love of music as do I, and it would be fun to to work on some projects together and see what we can come up with. That makes some kind of a rap song. Yeah, let's do it. yeah Send me some beats and I'll see what I got. but Cody, thank you very much for sharing how your four passive income streams make you $75,966 a month and how we can take some of the lessons that you shared and incorporate it into our own financial independence journey.
00:41:53
Speaker
Thank you for having me, David. This was a real pleasure. I'm glad we finally were able to coordinate this. And I got to say you have one of the sickest backgrounds in the YouTube game, definitely in the financial independence of sphere. So thank you again for having me on. Hopefully I delivered some value. Hopefully people get encouraged to start some passive income streams and change their lives with it. I think they will. And thank you all for watching and listening.