Hello and welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the realities of passive and semi passive income for mental health professionals by dispelling some of the myths that you've probably heard.
Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology
Links & References:
Episode 136: Dr Jo Mueller, The Guilty Parent Club
Episode 142: TikTok, Group Programmes and EMDR Intensive with Dr Claire Plumbly
Warren Larkin: warrenlarkinassociates.co.uk
Lauren Sawyers: serendipitypsychology.co.uk
Book a Coaching Discovery Call: https://psychologybusinessschool.com/1-to-1-coaching-for-mental-health-professionals/
Rosie on Instagram:
I get a lot of rubbish in my inbox about online courses and how creating one is going to allow me to live a “laptop lifestyle” working from anywhere and having oodles of money and free time. It’s annoying because I think I've made a really successful job of passive and semi passive income over the last few years, but that still isn't anywhere near the lifestyle that I lead. Partly that is because I'm a mental health professional, so the passive and semi passive income that I've created reflects that. I haven't just decided to move into an industry which is particularly lucrative for this stuff, although my things have done well, I have made money from them, and I continue to do so. But I think maybe some of the gurus that are in our inboxes are selling a story which may have felt true to them, but perhaps it isn't the most self reflective story and perhaps doesn't reflect the circumstances in which they started their business, and certainly doesn't reflect the values and ethical considerations that I know everybody listening to this shares. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about the realities of passive and semi passive income for mental health professionals by dispelling some of the myths that you've probably heard.
For example, many of the people that land in my inbox talking about passive income had a lot of money to invest in their business at the beginning, or maybe they were in a position where they didn't need to take a salary from it for a long time because perhaps they'd left a very highly paid corporate job in order to pursue their dream, or maybe they had a very wealthy partner so they didn't have that pressure to bring an income in early.
This is really important because reaching profitability from an information product like an online course or a digital download, largely depends on scale. If you're selling a £47 course, and you managed to sell it to 10 people, that is a massive achievement. Those sales for a low cost product are really hard to make, especially when you're starting out, but you'll only have made £470 from that. If you have bought one of these courses that often lands in your inbox, and if you have invested in all the tech that they recommend and made a multi modular, all singing and all dancing experience, that isn't going to cover your costs, but reaching those 10 customers every month is a big ask when you're starting out. You're going to be doing a lot of marketing activity for that and it's going to really eat into the time that you have to see clients or do other aspects of your work, so that would actually be a very ambitious target. So the reality is something's got to be different there hasn't it? You know either you're going to have to spend money on advertising to reach that scale sooner or you're going to have to invest more time because you're not going to be able to afford to use all the tools and the tricks that make it all easier for you.
In my view, when you're selling a passive income product, you have to decide whether you're willing to invest time or money or a bit of both. A significant investment is always required. If you have some money to invest, then you'll still need to invest a lot of time in order to know how to use that money to best propel your project forward. It is so easy to sink a load of money into something like Facebook Ads and never actually make any progress from it if you don't understand the platform properly. Investing time is never optional. You will need to spend time researching, creating, networking, promoting, devising marketing strategy, creating content, providing customer service… The list just goes on and on and on.
If you do have money, you can outsource some of those tasks, but not until you really understand what is required and what good looks like. I really think it's disingenuous of people to claim that you can create passive income with very little investment because you are going to be making a big investment of your time, your passion, and if you have it, a little bit of money too.
I know that what I'm going to say here is a bit controversial, but I honestly believe that in 2024 the amount of content that you would need to create to make a good income solely from organically marketing your information product just means that it's impossible for anyone that isn't a professional full time content creator. Of course, there will be exceptions. And if you're only aiming for a small income boost from your information product, you might be able to generate that, but it'll be a lot of work. In general, I don't think it is possible with the way social media platforms work in 2024. The people who really proudly boast that they haven't paid for advertising, but have made millions, usually grew their audience 10 years ago, when algorithms were more favourable and social media was less crowded.
Also, I don't really understand why they're proud of failing to invest in their business by exploring paid advertising, especially as a lot of them are teaching business strategy. And to be honest, it shows a real lack of business strategy to just proudly say you're never going to explore a paid advertising marketing strategy. One of the great things about paid advertising is that it's a lot more measurable. So if you're a professional marketer or really interested in marketing, paid advertising is a great way to go and can be really fascinating because you can see exactly what you get back for what you put in. Whereas with organic marketing, you're always doing a little bit of guesswork. Did somebody see my Instagram post and then see my blog post and then decide to buy the product? You can't actually see that journey, whereas you can track it much more directly from paid advertising. So to be honest, it does make me question somebody's credentials a bit if they're boasting a lot about not using any paid ads.
So far in this episode I have assumed that we've been talking about information products like online courses, because this is what is most commonly associated with passive income in the online world. But there are actually many types of passive income available to you as a mental health professional, and a lot of them are not talked about widely online because they're not available to people that don't have that core professional background. So what you choose to do in order to generate passive or semi passive income, it needs to fit your objective for your business, your abilities and capabilities, and your values. Sometimes information products are great and they're the best way to add an additional income stream into your business, but at other times, other models fit better. Some of those models include associate practice, licensed training or franchise, training other professionals, and even things like property rental.
I'd really encourage you not to get sucked into that tunnel vision that you've created, that is very present in the online space at the moment, where passive income equals online courses or other information products. It doesn't have to.
I have heard this said so many times and I really don't know how anybody who has any experience of a passive income product can say something which is just patently untrue. Creating a passive income information product costs time and it costs money, as we've seen. For example, it wouldn't be unusual for you to need to invest in some training, or some new software for email marketing, or maybe new landing page software and some editing software, and maybe some design software too. I am all for keeping it as lean as possible when you're starting out. I...