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3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Chasing "Easy Passive Income!"

When you work in the personal development space, you run across a lot of charlatans. It’s not hard to understand why. If you’re looking for advice on how to improve yourself, you’re saying you’re willing to trust someone.

It’s a sad reality, but there will always be vultures out there looking to scam anyone who makes the mistake of trusting them.

One of the most common scams these people advertise is the promise of “passive income.” I don’t put passive income in quotations because I don’t believe in making your money work for you—I “retired” from Goldman Sachs at 29, I understand investing. I put it in quotations because most passive income schemes are scammy nonsense designed to prey on insecurity and ambition.

I get it, money is important, and having more of it is nearly always a good thing. But what is it specifically about passive income schemes that is so attractive? If you’re interested in making your money work for you, there’s the whole world of finance and investing for that, so why the fascination with the “side hustle” and building “passive income streams?”

It’s because passive income schemes aren’t speaking to your desire for greater wealth, they’re targeting a different part of you entirely. To really understand this, ask yourself these three questions.

Career Planning: The Complete Guide

Do you have a career plan?

I’m sorry, that was a loaded question. Most people think they have a career plan, and according to everything they’ve been told their entire life, they do.

The problem is we’ve been lied to. As a child, you were taught two things:

How to set a big goal for your life. You wanted to be POTUS, CEO, a star, or a fireman (obviously, the coolest choice.)
How to do the work you’re assigned. In school, you learned how to be on time. How to complete assignments. How to follow instructions. You learned that the path forward in life is to do the work you are given until the person in charge says, “Okay, you can move forward now.”

As a result, most of us plan our careers the entirely wrong way. We set a big goal for our life, and then show up to work every day and grind. The path forward to us is, “Work harder and I’ll get there.”

That’s not a plan. That’s a dream.

Dreams are great. You need something to aim for, and you should never sell yourself short by aiming small. But when you wake up from dreaming big, you need a plan to get there.

Over more than a decade of research I created a five-step system, The System For Doing What You Want, that is designed to get you from where you are in your career and life today, to wherever you want to be.

How To Focus On What Really Matters—And Stop Wasting Time

“What do you want most in life?“

Anytime a client tells me they want to “focus on what really matters in life” and “stop wasting so much time,” I ask them that question. If they can’t tell me what they want in the distant future, they can at least tell me what they want right now.

While they’re usually prepared for the first question, they’re almost never ready for my follow up:

“Then why don’t you act like it?”

52 Books To Change Your Life In 1 Year

Postscript—

I’ve thought many times about taking this article down. It’s true that I like these books, and reading was indeed a very important part of my process of transfomation, yet…

One thing I learned from nearly two decades of reading is that pouring through books is of little value to you, relative to taking the best books and mastering them.

For instance, in speaking with someone about communications, I suggested, rather than reading a bunch of pretty good books, go deep into mastering Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People.

Sure, there’s lots of great books out there on this topic, but in the end it’s not what you’ve read that counts, but specifically, how good are you at putting this knowledge to work?

So, I keep this article here, but strongly suggest that rather than kindof knowing 52 books this year, master a small number that truly drive transformational learnings and results for you.

Here’s five from this list I find truly transforming—

Eat That Frog

The Magic Of Thinking Big

Man’s Search For Meaning

Influence

Flow

And, btw, 3 of my all time favorites aren’t even listed here, coz they’re more like bibles than to read this year—

Dale Carnegie’s book above, and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Outwitting The Devil.

Also, I have to tout my own book, Do What You Want.

It is the one book I wish someone had handed me before I spent years of my life reading all those books.

I won’t claim it’s better than some of these great books, but it by far would have been the most valuable book for me.

__________________________

I started this new phase of my life by reading. Years before I quit Goldman Sachs, stepping back from my career and asking, What Do I Want? I had no clue where to go for answers.
So I just started reading books on self-help, personal development and everything else that I thought would help me figure out my life. Like Forrest Gump, one day I started reading, and I never stopped. All the time people ask me what I’m searching for in all these books, and I tell them quite simply I’m searching for the same thing that you are.

Hence, if I were to recommend one simple practice to people who are serious about getting what they want, it’d be this: Grow and learn. Read at least one book a week.

I know to some people that sounds like a lot, but I also know that if most people stack up the amount of time that they spend reading junk (e.g. basically all “disposable” information online or in the news), they’d find tons of time to consume knowledge that will transform their life.

For those of you who are looking to keep growing, I’ve put together this course of 52 books for you to read over the next year—one book a week—that will transform you and your life.

Week 1

Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Brian Tracy’s classic is one of the best books on getting things done. Goal setting, initiative, focus, and follow through—it covers it all. It’s the perfect choice to get the ball rolling in week 1.

Is Passion Enough?

“Follow your passion.”

I don’t know how many self-help junkies I’ve heard say that, as if it was a deep, actionable insight that escaped most people.

The problem I have with people who say “Follow your passion” isn’t that it’s bad advice (it is) or that it’s skin-deep pseudo-philosophy (it’s also that). My problem with people who tell others that all they need to do is follow their passion is that they hurt people.

Passion is a wonderful, critical component to success and a fulfilling life. But a component on its own is useless, and passion by itself is simply not enough.

Prescribing “follow your passion” as a complete life philosophy is like teaching a young person to drive by saying “push the gas.”

The 1 Thing No One Wants To Admit About Success

What is success to you? Money? “Freedom”?

Doing something meaningful? What is that?

There’s lots of reasons to chase success, but there’s one they don’t talk about.

We live in a culture where we build cults of personality around our most successful people. We put their inspirational quotes on our walls. We share “motivational” memes on Facebook. We watch Rocky montages every morning.

Well, some of us…

Rocky

The point is, we’re very comfortable fetishizing the hard work that goes into success. We know it doesn’t come easy. We know success is a grind. We love the distraction of the hustle.

But there’s one aspect of success that we all know, somewhere deep inside, that we don’t say out loud:

We all know success is empty.

Sorry To Tell You—Your Life Coach Is Useless

It’s a question I get all the time:

“Should I work with a coach?”

And every time, I give the same answer:

“Which one?”

The Ultimate Guide To Using Role Models

High performers learn from other high performers. If you want to manifest a change in your life or achieve a certain goal, the best thing you can do is study people who have already done it.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many hundreds of highly successful people.

Yet I’ve found that there are small things that distinguish the most successful few. One of those is role models.

Some Great Carnegie Principles for Leading

I keep on my desk a summary of Dale Carnegie’s principles from his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

In his book he has some 30 simple principles you can easily use that he boils down to short statements like, “Give honest and sincere appreciation.”

I keep them as a reminder for myself and sometimes I work through them with my clients, such as today.

My client is having a difficult situation with one of her senior managers.

The manager has clearly made some mistakes, my client could have managed her better, but at this point my client wants to get the relationship back on the road.

After talking about it for a little bit, we went into each of Carnegie’s principles for being a leader.

It was a hugely constructive way for us to resolve this, and I thought some of you might benefit from reminding yourself of these principles too:

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
Let the other person save face.
Praise every improvement.
Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

Why Being "Crazy" Is The Only Way To Evolve

Those of you who have been around here for a while and know how I roll, know that part of my life is exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes.

It’s “crazy” to tell a “normal” person that you do meditation and hypnosis a couple of hours a day because you perceive that world to be deeper than this one, but that’s the truth of how I live.

I’m not into wasting time reading the news or Facebook or some other crap that people waste their time on.

I avoid their programming. I’m into programming that makes my life better.

And I know that those of you who are serious about evolving beyond this monkey brain and body that we find ourselves shoved into feel the same.

So, I invite you to a game I’ve been playing with myself for a couple of months.

Doing Great Things Isn’t Always Great

I saw this chart on LinkedIn, so I decided to rip it off and put it here.

Although it’s small, I hope you can get the notion.

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I’ve personally experienced this journey a number of times, and many of my friends and clients have too.

They say it takes decades to become an overnight success, and this shows you how it happens.

The 1% Aren’t Winning, But These 5 Entrepreneurs Are

The 1% aren’t winning. I say it over and over again in my work, but it’s a tough pill for most people to swallow.

Intellectually, we can understand that money is not the same as happiness. But on some basic level we are all taught to equate financial success with life success. No matter what our cultural programming, it’s a statistical fact that 2/3rds of workers in America, regardless of class, admit to being unhappy in their job.

But if the 1% aren’t winning, who is?

The builders. Creators. Sure, many of them may not yet have the success that they want, but they are living a life of purpose, driven by a vision and passion to make the world a better place.

Here are five of my favorite builders:

How Being Mission-Focused Makes You Recession-Proof

Everyone has an opinion on surviving a recession. You remember all those terrible news spots and articles in 2008:

“Everyone should own a liquor store, downturns never affect them!”
“You should work in healthcare. Even broke people get sick!”
“Just start a dropshipping company and sell fake purses. It always works!”

And underlying all that advice is one thing:

Happiness in your career and life is irrelevant, just so long as you feel a little safer financially.

If that’s how you feel about your life, then there’s no reason for you to read ahead. Happily stagnate forever. If you want to live a life where you are constantly moving forward, where you are always bettering yourself and moving towards what you truly want, then read on.

How Did Trump Win?

Right after the credit bubble burst in 2008, shocked, people scrambled desperately for answers.

Turning to the economists, nearly all of whom failed to predict the deepest recession in decades, they asked, “What will happen next?”

Having seen the obvious writing on the enormous wall of debt shadowing the world, and positioned myself perfectly in a distressed debt investing job, I found it terribly amusing.

If the world’s “smartest” economists couldn’t even see the credit crisis coming, then, how would they have any clue about where we are now headed?

Obama And Trump Won The Same Way

I won’t even turn on the TV or Internet to watch the mostly useless talking heads endlessly debate how “this could have happened.”

Nearly all of them had absolutely no clue before, so, why on earth would they see it any more clearly today?

They won’t. You can already see them blaming Wikileaks, or whatnot.

They will cry in their lattes, but most of them will never get how Trump pulled this off, because they never bothered to ask how Barack Obama did it.

Mesmerized by his nice sounding words, and slow, melodic voice, buying into the meme of the messiah, they simply failed to see they were being influenced.

Trump Vs. Clinton: How Propaganda Becomes Fact

I am often reminded of the difference between how we like to think the world works, and how it really works.

Years ago when we were doing some work for a public pension fund I learned that in some government jobs there’s a standard racket.

Pensions are set off their final year income, so it’s standard to jack up your overtime in your final year before retirement, so you not only earn more that year, but every year for the rest of your life.

To those who do it, it’s just part of the racket, it’s normal. It’s still wrong.

When you hear stuff like that you think, ugh, it just sucks that otherwise ethical people accept that as truth.

What is Truth?

There’s a lot of that in this election.

If it's hard for you right now, do this:

Get harder.

More focused.

Become stronger.

Get better.

Keep going!

How To Quit Your Job (And Still Win)

You’re going to quit at least one job in your life, probably several. In fact, 2.8 million Americans quit their jobs every month. You know what’s heartbreaking about that statistic?

Virtually none of those 2.8 million people know how to quit their job and still win.

3 Things That Hold Many of Us Back

Inside we all have a vision for our lives and who we dream to be.

For some of us this is an extension of our current path, but for many of us, going after what we truly want requires a deliberate shift, which can be hard to do.

Not only must we find the fuel to drive ourselves forward, but often we too must remove those things that hold us back.

If you try to drive your car while the handbrake is still tightly gripping the wheels, you’ll hardly get anywhere, and going after what you truly want is much the same way.

Need a Shot of Mojo?

One of my advisors has an interesting take on where she thinks many professionals are stuck.

She says, particularly in the drag race that is New York, many hard charging men and women have had the mojo beaten out of them.

Whereas most of us started our careers feeling unstoppable, somewhere in our twenties and thirties, after sustaining inevitable setbacks, many of us feel like we’ve lost a step.

And while it can sometimes feel like that mojo got left behind with Austin Powers, like a well-driven Aston Martin that has taken a few dings over the years, often we only need a little touch-up.

Fill Your Windshield

I started listening to podcasts.

For years I’ve known that plenty of people are putting out great content on podcasts, but, quite frankly, I haven’t made the time to listen.

It was my loss. I’m listening now.

This weekend I listened to The Unmistakable Creative podcast with Srini Rao interviewing author of The Talent Code, Dan Coyle.

He shared many fascinating insights on unlocking human performance, and there was one particular metaphor that deeply stuck with me.

Throughout the podcast, Dan talked about “filling your windshield,” meaning, what you are looking at, with the people and things that you want to be your reality.

In describing how people develop quickly in “talent hot beds,” Dan uses the example of a skateboard park.

Every day, kids are surrounded by better skaters, going for it, ripping new tricks. And, up and coming skaters can be constantly filling their windshield with these role models.

When they are in the park, they’re not just practicing on their own, or surrounded by people who allow them to coast, but they are constantly shown a successful role model of who they could be.

Those skaters who are serious about developing, not only watch, but learn to emulate their role models, then over time, become role models to others, and so on.

It is in this way that talent hot beds in Russia consistently produce top tennis players, kids riding around together all get better faster, and we can each challenge ourselves to new levels of performance.

Fascinating way to see it, right?

A question it inspired in me was: To keep getting more of what you want, how should you be filling your windshield?