Episode 100: Reduce Income Streams Before Burnout

Welcome to The Thought Card, a podcast about travel and money where planning, saving, and creativity leads to affording travel, building wealth and paying off debt. We are the financially savvy travelers.

Hey, financially savvy travelers, welcome back to another episode of the Thought Card Podcast. But wait, this isn't your typical episode because we launched a brand new series called Taking the Leap.

Now, if you're new here, well, welcome, my name is Danielle Desir Corbett. I love talking about travel and money and also podcasting. But for today's discussion, we're gonna be talking about entrepreneurship and I'm introducing this new series called Taking the Leap because back in episode 83, I shared with you all that I hd officially quit my high-paying corporate job to pursue full-time creative entrepreneurship as a blogger, podcaster, podcasting coach, speaker, you name it. I probably do it. For real though, but I am really excited about this series because it offers me a chance to share real-time, how I'm feeling about entrepreneurship. So the ups and the downs and the things I'm learning in between. I also know that there is a group within our podcast listener base that wants to do something similar. Perhaps you're a digital nomad, perhaps you're a remote worker, perhaps you work for yourself or you want to work for yourself. So sharing, I always love to share, but sharing has always been a way for us to connect and I'm hoping that these episodes will inspire someone and help someone along their journey.

So, in today's episode, I wanted to talk about and give us permission to give up income streams, it is okay for us to start with certain income streams and then let them go over time. So I currently have 17 income streams, I do a lot of different things. Now, I'm not going to say that I do all of them at the same time, there's some income streams that are seasonal or some income streams that are project based and time-oriented or time-limited, so at the end of the day, I do have 17 income streams when I really sit down and I think about all the things that I do in a year, however, I'm realizing now that I'm in my third week of entrepreneurship that there are some income streams, not a lot of them, but there are some that I'm losing passion for, there are some that have become really time-consuming or maybe they've always been time consuming, but when I had a full time job and I was side hustling, it didn't feel like that, but now I'm like, whoa, this is like really time consuming and I'm just again losing the passion to continue this income stream, I also wanted to mention that of the 17 income streams, not all of them are active, so let's talk about the difference between active income streams and passive income streams.

Active income streams are where you're going to be trading time for money, you are actively working and you're actively getting compensated for the work that you're doing.

Passive income streams is when you are not necessarily working, but you're still able to make an income from that. A big misconception people have about passive income streams is that it is an easy thing to do. You set it and forget it and watch it grow. Which some of them Yes, it's possible but a lot of income streams as a content creator and our passive require maintenance. It requires a little touching and snooping. Yes, I do make lots of money while I sleep but if I neglect some of them it's going to dry up eventually. So I just wanted to first clear the air and say that as a content creator, as an entrepreneur, I do have a mix of passive and active income streams which offers a great balance so I can yes be making money while I sleep while others are more of active, actively making this income.

Now, if you want to learn more about passive income streams, I highly recommend listening back to episode number 25 where Denis O'Brien from Chain of Wealth, does a really fantastic job with breaking it down what is a side hustle, why people consider having multiple income streams difference between side hustles and passive income as well as how to convert an active income stream into a passive income stream. So we talked all about passive income streams in that episode. I highly recommend listening to that.

So again, just for this topic, and just for just how I'm feeling right now, I am feeling like 17 income streams is amazing, but I do feel like I have a little bit too many that are active, right? Which makes time constraints a question. Even as a full time entrepreneur, I really thought that, Oh my gosh, I'm going to have 40 hours plus to dedicate to my work and that's true and it's wonderful. However, when you have so many active income streams that are pulling you in various different directions, it does get pretty tiring and I could see that if I keep it up, I will be potentially burnt out. Um you know, now that I am creating 100% of the time, as an as a content creator, I create for income, I create blog posts, I create podcast episodes, I write books, I write for other people. So my job is really creative and if most of the 17 income streams are requiring my brain power at all hours of the day, it's just not sustainable and it's going to be a recipe for disaster. So I definitely see myself going to overtime slashing things off of my income streams list and also concentrating more on building up those passive income streams and you know, for me, I'm a very, I'm like overachiever oriented. If you're a Virgo, you probably can relate to that because I'm a Virgo as well, but I love accomplishing things. I love growing, I love excelling and one of things I have to tell myself all the time, it's just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you need to make money off of that thing, right? It doesn't mean you have to necessarily create a full income stream that you know, part of me is like the opportunities in me, like I want to go and chase after all these things because I'm good at all these things. However, I think that there's something as an entrepreneur, a budding new entrepreneur of just laser focusing on a handful of things that that, that need your time dedicated time versus spreading yourself too too thin.

And you know, the whole point of this episode is to really to share and tell you that you can change your mind, you can say, okay, I want to do, for example, freelancing and then you become an entrepreneur and you're doing freelancing and you're realizing, oh, I don't like this, I want to start a membership instead and it's okay to pivot, it's okay to completely take things off of your list and it's not that you're a failure, it's that your circumstances has changed, your interests have changed and maybe your life has changed as well. We don't think about how our lives can change over the course of a year, right?

Let's say you want to start a family, your life is going to be changing drastically or maybe you have to now take care of and loved one who is ill or who needs your medical attention, he needs medical attention and needs your attention, right?

So I'm learning that you can change your mind, you can remove things off your plate. Um you don't have to make money on all of your skill sets, right? And also be open to change and be open to things happening in your life and you're realizing that you want to pivot, switch directions and that is totally, totally, totally okay.

So I'm going to most likely be slashing something's off by the end of the year. I'm definitely going to give it, you know, give it some thought and I think by January 2022 I will have a more dialed in business where I focus actively on a handful of projects and then the passive income projects, making sure that I have time to keep up with them to maintain them so that they don't like to dry up over time and create systems where I can even be optimizing and making them um grow even more.

Now. If you are interested in my 17 income streams, I would love to share them with you all on the podcast. However, if we get to 1,000 downloads of this episode, I will go ahead and record an episode where I detail my 17 income streams in-depth.

So make sure, well thanks again for listening to you know, this episode. So, thanks for being one of the 1,000. But I definitely will ask you to please share this episode with a friend who has an entrepreneur spirit who is an aspiring entrepreneur or who may find this interesting and let's get this episode to 1,000 downloads, so we can go ahead and record an episode all about my 17 income streams, how I got started, how I built them up and which ones I've kept along the way.

Alright, so that's all that I have for you. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Thought car Podcast. This is part of the Taking the Leap series and I'll catch you guys next time.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. But don't forget there's way more where that came from. When you become a supporter of the show, you'll get bonus episodes, additional tips on affording travel, real time updates, as well as strategies for building wealth and creating multiple income strings. Head over to thought card dot com forward slash join to support. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram. I'm @thedanielledesir slide in my DMs and share with me your thoughts about this episode. What did you enjoy? What stood out to you? Let me know? I'd absolutely love to connect with you outside of the podcast. See you in the next one.