One of the major roadblocks to financial independence is to depend on an income that is uncertain. Anything with the option of one creates fear and anxiety and depending on one source of income is the cause for financial stress.
Thus, when you want to be free from financial stress, one of the things you must do is to add a second or third side income to your main income.
If your only source of income comes from a full-time job, chances are high that you are already fearful and anxious. And worse of all is that your income lives and dies with your job thus postponing your financial independence. And so, if you have been racking your brains for ways to add a second or third side income to your job income, rack no more for today I will show you the answer.
What you need to create multiple streams of side income
To move from one income to multiple streams of income you need certain things. These things I call them seeds. A seed is the beginning of something and all sources of income must start with a seed. Thankfully, nobody has zero seed. Everyone has at least one seed that is the gateway to their desired financial future.
Unfortunately, most people are waiting for other people’s seed. They are waiting for someone to give them money, the government to help them or their employers to be the miracle worker. If you are waiting for other people’s seed I have bad news for you.
No one is coming to bail you out. The government is not coming. Your employer will not bail you out either. The secret to changing your current financial situation is to start with what you already have. You must be willing to sow what you have to reap what you don’t have. So what seeds do you need to create multiple streams of income?
You need broadly four types of seeds. The first seed is the money seed, the second seed is the scratch seed, the third seed is the action seed and the fourth seed is the time seed.
The money seed
The money seed is the seed that allows you create money from existing capital. Its function is to help you convert already earned income to other forms of income like passive income and other active income. And the best place to plant this seed is inside an investment vehicle. There are four types of investment vehicle to plant the money seed.
The first is in yourself. You are your greatest investment and major factor in how much income you earn. The second is in other people. The money seed can produce more money through the work of other people. The third is in a business. A business vehicle can increase and enlarge your wealth. And the fourth is in an investment vehicle. An investment vehicle can produce passive income.
The best way to succeed with the money seed is to have a lot of it. If you do not have a lot of money you need to leverage the other seeds that can help you produce money from scratch.
The scratch seed
The scratch seed is the seed you need to create wealth from scratch. This is how the majority of successful businesses started. The effectiveness of the scratch seed is that it does not depend on how much money you have but on how much of certain skills you have mastered and refined. Thus if you do not have money to make more money you must come to the table with certain skills.
What skills do you need to make more income?
There are many skills that can help you make money but all skills are not created equal. The mistake most working-class professionals make is to focus on and pursue job-related skills.
Job-related skills are limited in scope and cannot help you achieve financial independence with speed. If you want to make the most money in any economy, sector or industry, there are only three skills to master. I call these skills high-income skills because they can make you huge amounts of money.
So what are these skills?
The first skill is problem-solving skills also called creativity or innovation skill. The second skill is relationship building skills also known as networking skills. And the third skill is marketing skills also sometimes referred to as sales skills. These three skills are the only skills in the world that can help you build wealth from scratch. They are the closest you will ever get to making money out of thin air.
There are in important because they are aligned with the way money is made. Money is made when you solve a problem (creativity) for other people (relationship) in exchange for an agreed reward (marketing). So, if you do not yet have these skills, you need to develop them right away.
The action seed
The action is the only way to produce financial results. All the skills in the world will not produce any income if you just learn them and sit down. When you take deliberate actions, you move from just learning to planning, to doing and then to getting things done.
It is only the things that get done that deposit money in the bank. When you are thinking, planning or doing you are only moving towards an end goal. What matters at the end of the day is that things get done. Unfortunately, many people stop midway and miss the end reward.
The time seed
There is a distance between when you sow a seed and when you reap the reward. One of the things that can increase your chances of reaping a good reward is what you do with the time distance between sowing and reaping.
There are two things you can do with time while you await your harvest. The first thing is to waste time by whiling it away. The second thing is to invest time by engaging in two important activities.
The first is preparation and the second is qualification. To move to the next level in life you must prepare and qualify for it. Waiting and hoping that your seed will just produce a result without effort is a total waste of time.
So, these are the four seeds you need to create multiple streams of income.
Credit: Grace Agada, Punch