The safest source of passive income in the Philippines are savings accounts offered by banks.

If you have less than a million pesos, you earn a fraction of one percent.

If you have a million in the bank or more, the bank will offer a little more money.

You may earn money in paper investments.

The safest are money-market funds and bonds.

There are government bonds and corporate bonds.

These investments give less that 10% but are generally safe.

You may invest long-term in stock and earn a little more money compared to bonds.

The market goes up and down so if you need money at a bad time, you might lose a significant amount of your fund.

Investing in real estate has a decent passive income potential.

Building a good businesses or investing in a reputable franchise also has decent passive income potential.

Here’s the thing…

Everybody’s promoting passive income.

Accredited Financial Planners are pushing investment products sold by their sponsor company.

MLM or Network Marketing recuiters are selling the income potential of commissions from you selling their products or recruiting under their organization.

My only problem with this is that the 99% failure rate will likely bleed your finances before you make decent income.

Real estate brokers offer a combination of selling properties and recruit agents.

Insurance sellers may offer a similar deal.

Passive income from commissions that result in the effort of other people sounds too good to be true.

Financial books have indoctrinated us to want to go from earning a salary to earning passive income as fast as possible.

Why is that?

We are now conditoned to buy “this” investment.

We are now conditioned to participate in “this” business or industry.

When you invest in stocks, you are essentially owning a share of a company.

How can you tell if an investment is good or bad?

Unless you have specialized education, you are only speculating or blindly going by the recommendation of someone you trust.

In other words, “you are not thinking for yourself in this situation.”

Let’s go back to the skill tree of business owners.

Business owners need to know how to sell.

Business owners need to know how to market.

Business owners need to know how to negotiate.

Business owners need to know how to hire people.

Business owners need to know how to retain good people.

Business owners need to know how to train people.

Business owners need to know how to fire bad people.

Business owners need to know how to manage company resources.

Business owners need to know how to manage people.

Business owners need to know how to manage money.

Business owners need to know how to manage projects.

Business owners need to understand accounting and finance.

Got it.

There are more skills needed to run a successful business but let’s stop here.

How good are you at these skills that I listed above?

How many skills do you lack?

Each missing skill or inexperience in a skill is a blindspot when you are evaluating investments.

You probably heard about how some big shot investors go with their gut.

The critical detail that you’re not aware of is that these bigshot investors aren’t gambling.

These well-known investors know by heart the fundamentals of business and investing.

Here’s an alternate proposal.

Learn to manage yourself.

Learn to manage your resources.

Learn to hire people.

Learn to manage people.

Learn to earn income from managing people.

Learn to outsource part of your work.

Learn to eventually outsource most of your work.

Learn to build a bridge that allows you to cross from employee to employer first, instead of attempting to jump from earned income to passive income.

I call this bridge management income.

Why isn’t this concept popular?

Learning to build income from management of your own resources is difficult to monetize for third parties.

MLM recruiters are trying to get you to put all your faith in their company.

Financial advisors are trying to get you to put all your faith in their company.

Scammers are trying to do the same thing.

I’ve had this concept in my head for several years.

I apologize if some of the concepts aren’t clear.

I’m just sharing this for the idea to air out.

I’ll do my best to refine the idea based on your comments and reactions.

Some context on my background.

I’m aware of the concepts shared above because I’ve been a customer and seller of the above products and services at one point in my life.

I’ve read many financial and business books but have found many of the popular explanations insufficient.

It’s always a picture of:

Financial/Investment book: Save your salary > Become an investor.

Business/Entreprenurship book: Quit your job > Become an entrepreneur.

When you ask how…

All you get are motivational horseshit.

I eventually quit the “financial pursuit” and literally gave up on everything financial.

During my long hiatus, I came across non-financial disciplines and spent a lot of time with athletes, experts in fitness, martial arts practitioners, musicians and culinary practitioners.

I later discovered that there is a missing ingredient.

Shifting from being an employee to entrepreneur and investor isn’t a leap of faith.

You only read about leap of faiths because that’s how the media portrays successful people.

Athletes don’t magically lift 500lbs.

MMA fighters don’t magically become One Punch Man.

There’s training involved and it doesn’t involve mindset.

The training involves foundational skills.

One option is to go back to school and study busines management, then getting an MBA.

Another option is to invest in several small inexpensive online courses.

The final option is to test what you know so far and build micro-businesses that run on minimum-viable products and services.

I chose the inexpensive online courses and the tiny test businesses.

As time went by, investment decisions make a lot of sense.

I’m getting sleepy.

I’ll stop here.

Let me know your questions.

If you’re selling any of the products I discussed above, you probably hate my guts now.

Thank you for reading.

I’ll edit this post after giving this more thought.

Peace!

FEEDBACK:

It might just be me, but i dont get the post. I thought its about how passive income is low priority, but you talk about businesses, skills, mlms and ufc fighters but why is passive income low priority? You never say in your post, and im curious to know because its my retirement strategy.

I still dont get it. Are you saying that there’s a missing link between income from salary to passive income or are talking about income from salary to a business. Because passive income is the opposite of a business where you have to actively try to grow a business. As for me. I have been trying to grow my passive income little by little and if you dont like reading like me, there are loads of youtube channels that teach you from the basics to really technical concepts and thats why I was drawn to reading posts like these in the first place.

MY REPLY:

yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. I’m considering how we are often encouraged to jump from a salary to passive income. However there’s a missing step. Like if you’re watching a cooking show. You’re chopping garlic and onions and sauteing the ingredients. Then suddenly the scenes cuts to the fully cooked meal. You’ll notice chopped vegetables that wasn’t discussed in the early part of the show. You also see that a sauce has been drizzled over the meal and the chef says this show is sponsored by shopee. I’m not going to bother teaching you what’s in the chopped vegetables and the sauce. You can just buy from our sponsors. That being said. Understanding how businesses works enables us to understand which investments are good and which investments are horrible for us.

Passive income unfortunately is a low resolution word that can mean anything. I also pointed out in the post that by pursuing passive income we make ourselves vulnerable to people selling false goods under the guise of passive income. Passive income is not the opposite of business from my experience. Passive income from my study can be the result of a mastery in business.

FEEDBACK 2:

this is a great intro to a book!! What im interested in here and i think can be a different post is: The final option is to test what you know so far and build micro-businesses that run on minimum-viable products and services. based on what i know, i should run these tiny businesses then see what could be successful? But what is it that i know that can be my basis in building said micro businesses. how to pick those microbusinesses. Should i be great at each to pursue it? Should what i know be translated to anything of value to other people or at the very least whatever i love that i know, i pursue so I can see where my skills can be pushed further? Hahah Im not sure im making sense but yeah thats whats on my mind! I guess in future posts in your blog or here you can list or tell us some books that go past through the motivational stuff and really gave you more than just an insight but left you more questions that made you want to learn more. Thanks!


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