022. Feng Shui & Other Magic to Create Multiple Streams of Income

Lifestyle

Nov 21

Tired of relying on just one paycheck?

Learn the secrets that millionaires use to diversify their revenue. Today, Amber shares her insights on traditional income streams and on the new opportunities through the Creator Economy that give people like you the opportunity to create the income that can help you build positive cash flow month over month.

In today's episode, we cover the following:

Birdie & bogey (1:47)

Foundations to financial freedom (12:43)

The seven income streams that most millionaires have (17:50)

The major pitfalls in creating multiple streams of income (22:39)

Why passive income isn't achievable (27:29)

Income streams to avoid (30:34)

New streams of revenue to consider (36:02)

Hot stock tip: start a Feng Shui practice (46:46)

TRANSCRIPT

Amber F. (00:05)
Happy holidays, Rich Girls. Welcome back to the show. You're listening to the Old Money Podcast. And I am your very grateful host, Amber Frankhuizen, on the week of Thanksgiving. Just jumping into your podcast player to spend some time with you to talk about something that I think is really important when we're building our lives and our legacies and our wealth. And we're going to talk today about creating multiple streams of income and what that might look like for you. So maybe through listening to this episode, you might get some inspiration, some ideas of businesses or things that you want to invest in coming up into the new year as we're nearly six weeks away from the start of 2024. And I have a really fun episode coming up to you. I'm going to tell you how I planned my year in 2024 in December and the things that I do. I'm not talking about over setting goals or stressing out or New Year's resolutions. No, no, no. We're here to keep the cortisol low. We're here to talk about those easy systems to put in place to really up-level our lives automatically as we turn the clocks into the new year.

Amber F. (01:10)
And I like to get that all done at the beginning of December so I can really chill during the holiday season and enjoy my champagne without worrying about anything at all. So today I'm going to teach you one of the millionaire secrets to building wealth. We're going to talk about some of the foundations to financial freedom. And I also have a fun little spiritual mix of something for you at the end of the show that's all about feng shui, which is something that I'm really interested in studying. I've always been really interested in it, but something occurred to me with this streams of income conversation that it might be relevant to you. So before we get into that, let me tell you about this week's Birdie and Bogey. My Birdy for the last week was I got to go back to San Diego State and speak to a group of, I think, about 150 to 200 students outside on a beautiful fall day, I was on a panel with another girl named Carissa Stanton, who is so sweet. And we were asked questions from the Women in Business or Women in Leadership group about our journeys through building personal brands, starting businesses.

Amber F. (02:14)
And it was such an honor to go back to school and really be there as a relatable, honest person that could sit in front of a crowd of students and be like, I know I might look older. I mean, I do have great Botox, but I know I might look older, be older. But it wasn't so long ago that I was in your shoes. And these are some of the things that I wish somebody would have told me then. And some of the most salient things that come out of that. First of all, I don't know about you guys, but I'm a 100% that person where after I have a conversation with somebody or give a talk, I think, Oh, my God, I should have totally said this different thing instead, or This would have been a better answer. When I get caught on the spot with something, somebody's like, What's your favorite movie? I go blank. I black out. I'm like, I don't know. I've literally never seen a movie in my entire life. I could not name a movie if you paid me a hundred dollars. I really struggle with being on the spot, which is so funny because I get put on the spot in these presentations all the time.

Amber F. (03:10)
But one of the things that was so salient to me was that the value of going to college is going to things like this, going to the speakers, going to the extracurriculars. And it's not about me being on stage. It's not about the advice that you would hear. It's about the people that you're sitting next to. It's about the people that go with you. It's about the people that plan the events with you. It's about the connections that you make while you're there. Because the friends that you make in college or the friends that you make throughout your professional career are going to be the friends who when you get older, you're going to know somebody that's going to sell you a house or write you a loan or get you a job or a client or they're going to introduce you to this person or that person. And it's so much more about the relationships and the skills that you build over time that are going to get you farther than the grades that you try to achieve ever will. And I had lunch with one of my professors. He's actually the person who created the endowment for this whole organization to start on SDSU campus, which didn't exist when I was there.

Amber F. (04:09)
But he was my lecturer on sales in college. And I asked him, Is it appropriate for me to say that grades don't matter when you're in college? And he was like, Yeah, but don't say that. But it's true. And it's really funny now because when I look back, the things I wish I would have invested more in were being more present to what was happening instead of rushing from class to class and commuting and getting back to my apartment really quickly of deepening relationships. But we all go through this maturity and emotional growth on our own time frames. And one of the things I'm still working on is just forgiving myself for developing in the time frame that I do. I've always felt in my life that I was behind for some reason, or I didn't have all the information that everybody else had. I didn't know about sororities or fraternities literally until I showed up at college and I was recruited to go out with a sorority. And it was one of the most horrifying experiences of my adult life. Not the scene for me. I think I talked about this in the Bamma Rush episode, but my point is that I always felt like I was missing some key piece of information.

Amber F. (05:17)
And like I say, it's not about me being on stage. If you're a San Diego State student listening to this, I'm not your ticket to greatness, okay? You are your ticket to greatness. Your network is what value you can add. But I do hope that in speaking to students frankly and openly, one of the things that they can get from me is my honesty and my willingness to be transparent and relatable. Because I remember seeing so many speakers come to school that were very traditional business people. We had the founder of Dell Computers come to campus. I remember seeing that course, if that dates me at all. And a lot of executives and people in business suits. And it just wasn't what I was after. I didn't know what I was after. And so exposure to different types of jobs, like now we have this creator industry, which we're going to talk a lot about in this episode. But Carissa, the girl that was on the panel with me, she is a full-time content creator. She does recipes and is a cook, and she cooks on Instagram and TikTok. That's her full-time job. She's a lifestyle content creator.

Amber F. (06:23)
That was not a thing when I was in school. I also never saw anybody come to school and speak about being successful in personal life and mental health and business, I never saw anybody come in jeans like I was. I never saw anybody that was my age or somebody that was close an age to me that I felt like I could relate to. And that's just a sign of the times and how things are changing now. But it was really an honor to speak at SDSU. I got so many questions. I'm going to do an AMA, answering some of them very soon, of just some of the general stuff about me, about my life, about my business. And if you weren't able to attend that and you can listen to that AMA and get the gist of it. So I'll come back to that. But one thing I did want to share as the bogey for the last week was that, unfortunately, one of the largest budgeting apps in the world is getting shut down. And it's really, really sad to me because it was the budget app that I started using when I was in college, and it was called Mint.

Amber F. (07:22)
Mint was started in 2007, and I think I started using it at the end of my college career. And what it was an app that automatically hooked into your bank account and it would categorize your expenses or things you spent money on to give you a report of where you were over budget, where you're spending more in different categories, et cetera, et cetera. And it would also warn you if you were going over on categories or spending more than regular. For me at that time, I was using it to warn me if I was about to have an overdraft. That was where I was at on that $0 budget, I never had any money. So it would track my monthly spending, and then it would give me a notification via email. This was not... I did not have a smartphone. I had a BlackBerry at this time. It would send you an email and it would say, Hey, you're about to go over budget. So Mint was eventually purchased by Intuit, which is the same company that owns QuickBooks, and they are shutting down the program and trying to push their users towards Credit Karma.

Amber F. (08:17)
I also use the Credit Karma service, but Credit Karma does not provide the budgeting features that Mint does. And so it's a bummer because I think they're just trying to consolidate their product stack. But Credit Karma is more about tracking your inquiries and your credit score, things like that. And Mint is really focused on actual budgeting. So I wanted to make a couple of recommendations for other budgeting apps if you were on Mint for tracking your spending. Now, really important, the word budget just gives me the irk. Nothing about a budget sounds good to me. What does sound good to me, and I steal this from Ramit Sethi, from I will teach you to be rich, is a conscious spending plan. And what that means is that I, at the beginning of every single year, so this is one of the things we're going to talk about in December, we'll spend time mapping out my entire year. And I have a crazy spreadsheet that has every category. It's not crazy, okay? I shouldn't overreact. It's got beauty, it's got health, it's got gas, it's got groceries, rent, et cetera, all my saving goals. It tracks everything in one spreadsheet, and I get to determine where I'm going to spend my money.

Amber F. (09:24)
And it's conscious spending plan, meaning I'm deciding to do with my money versus my money is limited, and I'm trying to stay within. It's like a mindset game for me of deciding where I'm going to put the money that I have available to me for the enrichment of my life. For example, one of the things that I'm taking out of my budget for 2024 are hair extensions. I'm done with hair extensions. It's so much money to continue to move them up, get new hair, blah, blah, blah. And it doesn't really increase the value of my life. And my hair still always looks a mess. So that's getting cut out for me. Whereas when I have that, okay, now I know I can spend or I can reallocate those funds into something else that's going to give me a better ROI or more enjoyment in my life, like maybe our dining out budget or our vacation budget or whatever. It's a couple of thousand dollars a year that I spend on my hair that I'd rather have go somewhere else. So I manage everything manually on a spreadsheet. So that's what I'm doing on my money date every month.

Amber F. (10:24)
I download everything from Chase or Wells Fargo or wherever I have my money. And I'm looking at where I'm spending it by self-categorizing. And then I will put all of my different expenditures and different categories and transfer those amounts into my spreadsheet. I do this manually because for me, this is me being a steward of my money and really being close to it and intimate with it. But I have also used some of these apps in the past that I think are really helpful. And I wanted to again make two recommendations for you of things you could try if you want a system to automatically record your different spending habits. So the first one that I really like that I looked into is Monarch Money. The challenging thing about budgeting apps is there's usually a fee with it. This one is $99 a year. But if you're going to actually use it and you're going to leverage it to help improve your financial position, put it into your conscious spending plan. The thing I like about Monarch Money, and the reason I looked into it originally is because it can track both individual and joint accounts, and it will categorize everything for you.

Amber F. (11:24)
And then the other thing is that it has all of these third-party aggregators, so it can pull your information from multiple different credit cards, multiple different banks. It tracks your interest. It can track your stocks, your investments, all the things. So you really get an at a glance net-worth picture. The other system, which would be a good replacement for Mint if you were using it, is YNAB. And I have used this program before and I really liked it. Ynab stands for you need a budget. So it's Y-N-A-B. It's also $99 a year. And the thing that I like about Ynab is that it really helps you look at your regular spending and then prepare for it. So it basically creates earmarked funds for you so you can save a little bit every single month. It's the automatic version of what I talk about in episode five of afford everything that you want. And it's the same type of thing. It allocates your spending. It tells you where your money is going. It's another really good opportunity. I don't know if I already said this, but it's also $99 a month. So if you guys are interested in how I manage my money or how I run my budget, will you let me know if it's worthwhile for me to spend time creating some like Google Doc for you or a template?

Amber F. (12:32)
Let me know. In the meantime, YNAB and Monarch Money are two of the favorites that I have found to replacement and rest in peace Mint. Thank you for your service. Let's get into the meat and potatoes of today's episode, which is all about creating multiple streams of income. So to back it up a little bit, there are some foundations to financial freedom that I think are really important to just mention again at the top of this conversation. I've gone through these before and they've ebbed and float a little bit. And the thing is that most of the traditional conversation about money is that to build wealth, you have to create it, keep it, and protect it. Okay, we get it. So the things I'm adding on to that conversation are you have to have the right mindset. You have to be able to treat your life as a business, treat yourself seriously, understand why building wealth is a benefit to you and to the world so that you can build wealth without having these outdated mental models or old money stories in the way of your success. It's going to just be so much easier and more effortless if you have the right mindset going into it.

Amber F. (13:37)
And you also have some of those knowledge keys, like knowing that you're going to play the long game, remembering that the majority of Warren Buffett's fortune was made after the age of 65 or 75 or whatever it is, remembering that you have the historical data to show that you can withstand market fluctuations. So you don't have to be worried. When you hear the news, you can self-soothe, self-regulate, know how to use dollar cost averaging. All of these mindset and then also just the tactical tips, I think, really do influence your ability to build wealth. And then the foundation of that is also getting out of financial fight or flight. Paying off your debt, not carrying consumer debt, not having shame about where you're starting, like really being honest with where things are. And then from a baseline of, okay, I've got savings in the bank. I can take care of myself. I can create safety in myself with what I can produce in the world. Then you can really lean into actually creating wealth. This might be hard to hear, but my experience and my belief is that you cannot truly create wealth for yourself if you're living in a deficit.

Amber F. (14:49)
I'm not talking about having a mortgage. I'm not talking about leveraging debt to build a business or anything like that. But I'm talking from a mindset deficit and from a consumer credit card deficit. That if you are living in a state of playing catch-up, there is no way that you can build upon that. You're basically just filling a hole with dirt, filling a hole with dirt. But until you have a solid foundation, you can not build a building of your life on top of it. So creating it is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about different streams of income. But just to go back to the foundations of financial freedom, we've got mindset, we've got getting out of financial fight or flight so that you can really create wealth, then you've got to keep it and grow it. You can't just spend it all. You need to make sure you're not keeping up with the Joneses. You don't have shiny objects syndrome, but you're also growing it respectfully, responsibly with stock markets, investments, et cetera, because compounding interest is going to be the thing that really builds your wealth. And then you need to protect it.

Amber F. (15:45)
So that means wills and trusts, making sure that you have the correct paperwork going into a marriage. Go back and listen to the Prenup Playbook episode with Natalie Alicia Goldberg, if you have questions about that, because holy hell, that was one of the most incredible, most incredible episodes that I've ever done. And then the last piece of this of Foundations to Financial Freedom is enjoying your money. If you are a slave to making money and all you care about is making money, your money owns you. You don't own it. So you need to find a way to enjoy your life and invest in the things that bring riches to your life. And I mean that in terms of ROI on enjoyment and people and adventure and travel and being a human, being alive on this Earth and not just being locked and loaded into your laptop all the time. Really enjoying your money is part of the foundation to financial freedom so that you can leverage what you create in order to really live. And then there's going to be a tipping point to where what you're creating is happening automatically, and all you have to focus on is enjoying your life because everything else is happening in the background.

Amber F. (16:53)
So how do we get to that point where we're not working 40 hours, 50 hours, 60 hours a week to the fill our lives or fund our lives? Well, let me ask you a question. What is the way that money gets deposited into your bank account? Most of us are getting a paycheck. We're getting a paycheck once a month or every two weeks, and that is the majority of how people are getting money into their ecosystems every single month. That is one stream of income. It's earned income from a paycheck. Now, that's great. If you have earned income from a paycheck. That's step one, honey. That's really, really important. But did you know that the average millionaire has seven streams of income? That means they have money showing up into their bank accounts. Let's just simplify it for the sake of conversation. Again, they have seven different ways that money is hitting their bank account every single month. According to the IRS, most millionaires have seven income streams, and they are number one, earned income from a paycheck. We talked about that. So that's working for a company and getting a paycheck. Number 2, dividend income from stocks owned.

Amber F. (18:03)
So obviously your stocks will, if your company or your portfolio is doing well, increase in value. But also some stocks pay dividends out for those who own the stocks as well. Number three is rents from rental real estate. Number four are royalties from selling rights to use something they've written or invented. So you hear about this on Shark Tank a lot where a lot of the inventors are trying to get licensing deals for, let's say, I have a hat company and I want to put Disney stuff on it. I need to get a licensing deal to be able to put Daffodil Duck on my hat because Disney will charge me a licensing fee, and then they get royalties from selling the rights to me to use Daffodil Duck on the hat. Or royalties, for example, this is a big conversation in the reality reckoning that didn't go anywhere and was a total train wreck of a PR stunt by Bethany Frankl and Vanity Fair, where there is a conversation about should reality stars get paid royalties for their shows being replayed on Peacock over and over again. And they're saying that reality stars were underpaid and they should be getting royalties on their likeness or appearance or whatever.

Amber F. (19:15)
But the thing was these are all consenting adults who go into these contracts for a shot at fame, which we know is a goal of many of these reality stars. And they weren't under duress, they're making decisions for their business. And then over time, as you prove your success on the show, you can negotiate for more. So the conversation of they're underpaid, it's like, that's fair market value, in my opinion. If you're going to get somebody who's going to be willing to go on, I don't know, Vanderpump rules for $10,000 an episode and they haven't proved themselves yet, it's like people are replaceable. You can always find new stars. There are always people out there that want to be on those shows. Now, as you rise through the ranks, Lala is going to get more money than $10,000 because she's not replaceable anymore. She's a core character. Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about that, but you understand what royalties are. The next one back to the IRS. Number five, capital gains from selling appreciated assets. This is when you have a home, you buy the home, it builds an equity, and then you sell that home later for a higher amount than you bought it for, those are capital gains.

Amber F. (20:22)
Number six is profits from businesses they own. Number seven is interest from savings, CDs, bonds or other lending activities. Okay, so one of the things that I will have to say about having seven streams of income is that you don't need to have all seven streams of income tomorrow. And by the way, those seven from the IRS, that is the old money way, baby. But we're talking about the new money way. And I have so many more things to add because we are in a new era of business. This is the creator economy. This is new money magic. That's what we're talking about on Old Money Podcast. This is not just invest in stocks and hope that dividends pave your way to success. Success, we have way more resources available to us now as creators, as young people who understand technology. And this was one of the biggest things that I talked about at SDSU last week. For the students that are applying for jobs and they are saying, How can I get a job when it says I need experience, but I can't get experience unless I get a job and it's just chicken and egg?

Amber F. (21:20)
I had a lot of sympathy for that a couple of years ago in the marketing space. Now, I'm only talking about the marketing space. I cannot speak to things like being a physician or a finance person. You're going to need to know some shit in finance. You have to work your way up in order to get to the top. But you have to start at the bottom of the totem pole. But in marketing today, every single marketing tool that a marketing person is using is available, and most of them are free. So if you are trying to gain experience in marketing and you have not created your own Instagram following, TikTok following, video editing skills, canvas skills, portfolio. It's your own fault because you need to make your own experience these days. I have hired so many people that have come to me and said, Here's the things that I've done. Here's my writing portfolio of fake articles. Here's my fake mock-up of how Sweetgreen could do their Instagram better. Here's what I would do if I was Oprah on her TikTok. Having a plan in place and being able to execute on that is how you create experience in your life for getting the jobs that you want, especially in marketing right now.

Amber F. (22:29)
So that was a big question that came up, and that was a big piece of the conversation in the SDSU talk. Let's get into what it looks like to make those in just a second. But I want to talk about some of the challenges in building these seven streams of income, okay? The first challenge or pitfall in building multiple streams of income is trying to do them all at once. This is a big mistake that I see a lot of people doing because they'll hide behind, Oh, I'm a multipassionate entrepreneur, or I'm a multipassionate person, and they haven't even mastered one revenue stream yet. Okay, and I say this with a lot of humility and grace because even I am still working on mastering my revenue streams. I have a profitable business. I have a business that I love, but it doesn't run without me. It takes a lot of management and maintenance, and I'm still a key piece of the operations of that business. I plan to be, I intend to be forever in some capacity, but it will change over time, for sure, as the business grows. And I put people in place that can do the job better than I can.

Amber F. (23:29)
My job as the CEO is to hire people that are smarter than me and better than me at producing what our clients need so that we can be competitive. My job is to find those people, put them together, and then make sure the business stays healthy. So mastering one revenue stream is what you need to focus on first. So for me, one of my revenue streams is my paycheck that I get from my business because I have an S corporation. So I get a paycheck from my business for doing my job. And then another revenue stream that I have are the profits from the business as well. As the sole entity, sole owner of the entity rather, those profits are mine to do with as I please. However, most of the profits that I make are reinvested into the business or into myself. So that's two revenue streams right there. If I tried to go start a podcast at the same time that I was starting my business, and I also tried to go flip and fix a house at the same time I was starting my business, and then I was also really focused on building my stock portfolio, I would be chasing a thousand squirrels.

Amber F. (24:27)
And the thing about chasing squirrels is that if you chase many squirrels, you literally never catch one. That's an old proverb that I totally botched. But the thing is you need to focus on one thing first to get that train on the track, and then you can go to the next thing. So for those of us who like to get our hands in a lot of different honeypots, I caution you. Don't spread yourself too thin because you really need to master something first before you move on to the next thing. So, for example, if you're going to focus on building a stock portfolio, get it done, get it dialed, get it automated, get that in a way that is running on its own. So then you can put a pin in that and go to the next thing, which is starting a podcast, starting a YouTube channel, monetizing it and creating another stream of income. So the second pitfall of creating multiple streams of income is being overly focused on what other people are doing. This is huge, I think, especially for the younger generation of seeing other people out there and getting really jealous.

Amber F. (25:23)
Oh, that girl is a content creator on TikTok. I could be doing that too. Oh, my goodness, that person just started a business. I should be doing that. What are they making? And here's something that I really hate right now is this glorification of revenue numbers on the online space. So I'm talking a lot about content creators, about online coaches who flex on how much revenue they've made. Revenue is just one metric of your business, and it's not the most important one. Profitability is. There is an online creator, and I've never paid for any of her stuff, but I've definitely listened to a few podcasts she's been on. I follow her on Instagram. She claims that she's made $70 million in revenue through her online coaching business in the last five years. Now, that is an insane claim. Good for her if it's true, but it's also not the whole picture of her business. And I think it's really bizarre to flex with revenue or flex with income. I even think it's a little tacky to flex with your possessions online. So that just takes me with a grain of salt of what I think is appropriate.

Amber F. (26:26)
And maybe you disagree. This is the new world of money, and we're more transparency. But for me, it's not about being secretive or private. I'm all about transparency. But what this does is it creates an obsession with other people's incomes, with other people's programs, with other people's stuff. And what I'd rather have happen is that we focus on our own stuff, our own passions, our own way of adding value and putting those blinders on to just focus on our own paths. So what's happening with these people glorifying revenue is that they're using it as a marketing tactic to sell you their programs, but their programs are just the way they've done it. It doesn't mean that you can't also create a program on your own. And listen, there's a lot of value to getting mentorship, getting training, understanding how the program works, that's for sure. But I think sometimes when we have these big revenue numbers, it's going to skew how we would invest in things because we see, Oh, if they could do it, I could do it as well. The third pitfall of creating different revenue streams is one that I see so often and I want to dispel a fact right now.

Amber F. (27:37)
Passive income is not a thing. Tim Ferris wrote a book for our work week in, I don't know what, 2007 or something. I was for sure in college when I was obsessed with Tim Ferris. And four-hour work week, even though he pared his work down to four hours a week, his passive revenue stream still took maintenance and management. And that was back nearly 15, 20 years ago when there was much less competition and saturation in all of these spaces. And it was easier for him to do little maintenance because there was less competition. So now if you're looking at doing a course or membership or something like that, it's not going to be passive income. You can not just set it and forget it and then never touch it again. And the reason for that is because consumers are smarter and they want more out of what they're investing in. So if you think you're going to do a course one time and then never update it again, you're mistaken. You're going to need to be able to market it every year when you do a launch. You're going to need to update it. You're going to need to make it competitive against what new information there is or new modalities or whatever it might be.

Amber F. (28:40)
So passive income is really not passive. Even if you have something that's Amazon Drop shipping or whatever it might be, you still need to maintain your business. I do not believe that any income is truly passive, even your savings accounts. Okay, that's passive income in a way that I'm getting automatic payments of interest every single month, but it's my responsibility to make sure that my money is in the right account, that it's allocated correctly, that I'm not carrying too much cash and not overinvested in different things. The more income streams you have, the more responsibilities you have. So people who are looking for a get-rich-quick, passive income path, I don't know that that's fully available to you, but I will tell you there are a lot of ways to make money these days that are much easier than slaving way 100 hours a week at your job. So the last thing I want to say as a pitfall too, is don't be a victim of shiny object syndrome. If you are a Magpie and every time somebody gives you a new business idea, you start something new, this is not for you. Going back to the first pitfall, you've got to focus on mastering one revenue stream first and not get distracted by all of these new opportunities because there's always going to be a new opportunity to invest in a new product, start a new business, partnerships, etc. You've got to stay really focused. So that's just something to keep your eye on.

Amber F. (31:19)
So as we've talked about the old school ways of creating seven streams of income, which earned income, rents, dividend income, capital gains, royalties, profits, interest from savings, et cetera. Let's talk about the new rules to building seven income streams because I have a lot of ideas for you and I want to run through them. I'm going to start with the very bottom of things that you've heard about that are not necessarily things that I recommend. But again, this is not investment or legal or business advice. This is just a girl who's seen some things on the Internet and has some things for you to think about. So let's talk about the least valuable things that you should maybe not be investing in, which are new ways to create money.

Amber F. (31:59)
But are they really? So the first one are really obviously MLMs, okay? Don't do it. I'm not going to do an episode on MLMs. You guys know that these are, for the most part, really hard to be successful in. And MLMs, they're now calling themselves network marketers and certainly there are many people that have done very well through network marketing. Maybe you're just a Rodan and Fields person, and I'm going to message you for my lash serum, or I'm a big isogenics person, and I continue to order my protein powder, whatever it might be. I'm just warning you it's very hard to make a living through MLMs, and they are born on this lottery ticket idea that this is your path to success, because look at those Diamond Star, nine-figure business, salespeople, whatever they call them, that's not likely to happen in MLMs that have been established for a very long time. And multilevel marketing is actually very, very involved. It's a lot of work to build a network. It's also a lot of posting. It's a lot of communication. And from what I've seen, it's a lot of toxicity, both in the interpersonal dynamics of the MLMs, but also in...

Amber F. (33:08)
I know a lot of people who have been involved in MLMs, and they say the way to do it is just to buy followers on Instagram. It's just to show the purses that you buy and go on these vacations and make sure you post about how much freedom you have. It's not sustainable for the long term, and it's also incredibly inauthentic in my opinion. The other things that I would watch out for are these new MLMs, which are, for example, the new courses I see all the time, which is how to be a millionaire from Amazon Drop shipping. If you sell this butter container that you buy on Alibaba, you're going to be a millionaire and live in Miami and a high rise and drive a fast car. It's like these are the new hacks that people are selling out there for a way to build financial freedom. And yeah, just the same way you can make money from an MLM, you can also make money from doing things like this. But is it the right to return on investment? That's not something I can tell you for sure. I'm not interested in Amazon drop shipping.

Amber F. (34:01)
That's not something that speaks to me, but maybe it's something that speaks to you. I just think there's other opportunities here to really, really build wealth. That seems like a flash in the pan to me. The next thing, which again, lower on the list of the least to most upside is leveraging the gig economy for more income. With the gig economy, I really warn people, whether it's Airbnb, Turo, doing Instacart, anything like that where you're loaning out something that you own, an asset that you're own or you're really spending your time doing something for someone else, you might be a third-party independent contractor, which means that you get to set your own time and hours and you have control of your schedule. You're still working for somebody else to achieve their goals. And also, a lot of people do a really bad job calculating all of the hidden costs that come along with doing these things. For example, if you're going to do Uber driving, what's the wear and tear on your car? How much more often are you going to have to get your tires rotated, changed, your oil changed, your fluids changed, you're putting a bunch of miles on a vehicle that you might need for other things.

Amber F. (35:08)
Are you calculating that in to the rate that you're getting per hour? Or are you just kicking the can down the road and ignoring that? Turo is another interesting one. This is where you can rent out your car for other people to use instead of them doing a rental car service. And we just did this in Miami. And we had an amazing vehicle, great host for our trip to Miami. It was far less expensive than doing a rental car, and we got a much better quality car. But I was thinking like, do I want somebody driving? We had a fast car, and I was very gentle on it. But it's like, if I have a great car, do I want somebody slamming on the brakes, like overtaxing the transmission with these paddle shifters. No, you can't trust people to always act in the best interest of your belongings. So again, that wear and tear that can add up by participating in the gig economy. You might be making a couple hundred bucks by loaning your car out for a few days. But if you add up all of these expenses and then also dropping the car off, coordinating with the person, texting, if you're an Airbnb host, you know this, being a landlord, even if it's for a short time, it's a lot of work of managing people coming in and out of your house, unclogging toilets, kicking people out when there's a big party.

Amber F. (36:18)
We were just at the Boat Show in Fort Lauderdale. And one of the things that I noticed significantly was the boats that are chartered versus the boats that are privately owned. And when I say boat, I mean like 100-plus foot yacht. The charter boats just look so much more worn. You can tell the pillows are bleached out from the sun. There are scratches on the walls. The floors are showing wear. Things are creaking more because it's just getting more use. It's like, think about watching below deck and people go that ham when they're chartering a yacht. If you're chartering a yacht, that's a whole business in itself. Sure, you're not managing it, but you're still looking at the fees that you're paying to the management company, the crew that's on board, making sure is done to your standards, making sure that people are maintaining the boat to your standard, all those different types of things. Having a boat, even if you're going to charter it, it's a full-time job. It's a whole other asset to manage. So yeah, owning a yacht and chartering it, it might be a revenue stream for you. But as I mentioned earlier, more revenue streams mean more responsibilities.

Amber F. (37:20)
So going back to some new money magic, some new revenue stream opportunities. This is a controversial take, but I think we're past the golden era of online courses, and that was for so long people's ticket to creating value that could be shared or bought at scale on the internet. So Seth Godin, who is a marketing writer and marketing guru, just like beloved, his online classes, and I'm talking about he is the most prolific marketer of our time, his online classes have a 97 % drop-off rate. That means only three % of people finish his courses. Udemy, which is another online course hosting platform, they say that the average student enrolled in the Udemy course completes just 30 % of the content, and an average of 70 % of students never even start the course. So I think now people are recognizing their own patterns that they are not finishing courses that they buy. But the thing with courses is, again, they're lottery tickets, right? I keep talking about this, and I don't remember if I've explained it on the podcast, but it's like the night before when you buy a lottery ticket and they're pulling it the next day and you think all night long about how you're going to spend the money that you win because you're so certain that you bought this ticket, you got your entry, you're going to win the prize, it really booies you.

Amber F. (38:40)
It makes you feel so good and hopeful and optimistic. Buying a course is the same thing. You think, Oh, my goodness, I bought this course. It's going to teach me exactly how to manage my money or how to change my mindset or manifest things, whatever it's going to be. I think a lot of people now are really struggling to sell courses because it is a very saturated market and the consumer has learned they're not necessarily as inclined to finish an online course. So does that mean I think online courses are over? No, not at all, because I think there's an opportunity to really niche down into your community and what you teach. I think Amanda Francis is still the number one course creator that I've ever seen. She has it down to a science. And I'm so in awe by her. She's always adding to her program. She's always adding value. She is just on a system that works so well. But I'm also seeing some things fall off. There was a big time when printables or downloadables on Etsy were a big thing. There was Teachers Paying Teachers, which is an online platform for teachers to create different content or lesson plans or printables for classrooms.

Amber F. (39:45)
That I see a lot of teachers doing really well with of putting their creativity to use and helping other teachers with new resources. That's where I think there's opportunity, really niching down into creating value for a core group of people. I love that. Other couple of things are creating community. So if you have a membership platform, if you have a patron, I think that's a great opportunity now, especially with how fragmented our lives are and how desperately people are looking for community and for friends. I think it's a really important time for creators to be cultivating that. And it's a big energetic lift, I'm going to be honest with you, to create community or just be available for people in all capacities and allowing them to show up as they are. Having that type of container is a big responsibility. It's why I haven't created it yet. It's a big responsibility. And I think it's something that for the right people, for the right type of personalities, it's something that could really benefit them for creating that. Again, you still have to maintain it, manage it, nurture it, etc., but a great way to create a new revenue stream for yourself via a creating community.

Amber F. (40:52)
And then when we really get into now the creator economy, this is where I really want to lean in, because now you can be creating so much revenue for yourself at scale by not just being an influencer, which is what everybody talks about and thinks about, like whether you're on TikTok and you're shilling products or you're on OnlyFans, or you're selling feet picks, whatever that might be, you can be a UGC creator and never show your face, never post anything on your own platforms, but just create things for brands as their marketing video person or their UGC giving a testimonial for it. Ugc means user-generated content, by the way. The thing is with this is there's such a big need for it. I work in marketing. I need UGC. Every single week we're scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for somebody who will be willing to do it for us, for our clients. We need it so badly because social proof is one of the best ways to get people to engage with marketing online. And we're really looking all the time for great creators to create great content about the products and services that our clients sell.

Amber F. (41:59)
This creator economy did not exist 10 years ago. No fucking way did that exist in 2013. That was pre-influencer era. So just to think what will be available for you to create revenue in 10 more years, I think understanding the social landscape is super important, and that's an incredible opportunity. And then the next thing that I have to say is starting a business or a side hustle that's really about adding value to people's lives is what I believe to be the ticket. You could have a couple of different types of business. You could have a service-based business. You could have a product-based business, a consultative business. Anything that provides value for others is how you're going to succeed in business. Business is just providing a solution for people who have a problem and the ability to pay. Let me say that again. Having a business is about providing a solution to people who have a problem and the ability to pay for somebody to solve that problem for them. So when you're able to create something that helps out somebody else's life, you're going to be able to exchange money for that value. I'll give you a really good example.

Amber F. (43:11)
People with really messy homes or really disorganized homes will pay professional organizers to come in and organize their stuff. In fact, I know people who have their professional organizers come in quarterly to clean and refresh and keep things nice and neat and organized and labeled or whatever it might be, because for them, it's easier to pay somebody to do it than for them to do it themselves. It's solving a problem and they have the ability to pay. And this dovetails really nicely with the more traditional streams of income, which again, profits from businesses that you own. But also the other thing is the ability to sell your business at a multiple when it's matured or when you've matured out of it. So if you are in a particular business like software as a service, for example, if you create an app or a software that helps people at scale, you can eventually sell that app, that software, whatever, for a multiple of 8-10 times your annual revenue. So if you have an app that's making a million dollars a year and you go shop that on the open market, you could expect to receive 8-10 million dollars for selling that app to somebody else.

Amber F. (44:18)
You might sell it to your competitor or to a conglomerate or whatever it might be. But having something that you can build and create as an asset that not only gives you income, that not only gives you profits, but that gives you the opportunity to sell it at a later date is a huge benefit towards creating multiple streams of income. And within that business, you can have multiple streams of income in one stream of income. I'll give you an example. At AF Marketing, we have retainer clients that we serve every single month, whether it's for social media or for web maintenance or graphic design, whatever it might be. We also have project-based clients where we do branding, we make websites. I also do strategy intensives where I can partner with a business or brand or a person either once a year or quarterly throughout the year. And that's just me working directly with people or directly with brands in a consultative standpoint. That's another stream of income that I generate fully on my own. And then also we have referrals to other partner agencies. So sometimes we get people that are interested in working with us and maybe our retainers are too high or it's not an area that we specialize in, whether it's the industry that that client's in or the services that they need.

Amber F. (45:28)
So I have a network of partner agencies that I've set up relationships with, and we have contractual agreements to where if I send them referrals, they pay me a referral fee. That is another stream of income in our business. By the way, if you are a marketing service out there and you want to be considered as one of our marketing referral partners, we offer the exact same terms both ways. So you referring people to us will pay you, you referring people to... Wait, what's the opposite? Us referring people to you? Yeah, then we'll pay you, etc. Or you'll pay us. You get what I'm saying. My point is, within this one umbrella service, we have so many different opportunities to create multiple streams of income or multiple ways for people to pay us. Of course, going back to some of the traditional things as well, also just investing, investing, investing, investing in paper assets, which are stocks, bonds, bitcoin, whatever it might be, whatever it floats your boat and fits your investment portfolio, or investing in real assets. So real estate, whether that's single-family homes, multifamily homes, a multifamily syndicate, things like that. Just note that if you want to be somebody who gets rental income, there are so many hidden costs to homeownership, number one.

Amber F. (46:40)
But the hidden costs to being a landlord are far and away more costly than money will ever be. The headache, the time and the effort of being a landlord as somebody who's worked in property management has been very closely intertwined with one-on-one rental properties. I don't know, just really be in that, right? And then the other thing is too, how do you invest in real assets if you are a fix and flipper? Honestly, nothing did worse for the real estate industry than Tarik Al-Moussa or whatever that guy's name is from that freaking show on HGTV with the shoddiest fix and flips jobs, just the cheapest materials. I see them in San Diego all the time. These beautiful Spanish bungalow homes that have a random floating cabinets in a hallway that have no purpose being there. It's all Home Depot stuff. If you're going to be doing that as your job, I beg of you, just for the overall health of the real estate market in general, please do right by your buyers and only do it if you can really make an improvement into the home that is not just lipstick on a pig to make profit, but it's something that's going to increase the lifespan of the home in a meaningful way.

Amber F. (47:55)
Okay, so this episode, just like all of them, it's always running long. I hope you guys are liking these hour-long episodes because I just can't stop talking. But for our talk tip of this week, in the theme of multiple streams of income, I wanted to share with you something that I found recently that I've been practicing, and it's a feng shui practice. And as you know, feng shui is the arrangement of things in your home based on different cardinal directions and ways that you can increase your luck and the Chi, the energy that flows through your home to help you achieve the goals and the life that you want. And one of the things that I have been really focused on is being really conscientious of where my mindset is at any time of the day. So a lot of people like crystals, right? I have a couple of crystals that are sitting on my desk. And the thing is, is I don't interact with them much, but when I see them, the crystal acts as a talisman of a reminder of what I want to think about or my intention or my manifesting energy around that crystal.

Amber F. (48:57)
So, for example, I have a selenite on my desk, and cellenite is supposed to cleanse your energy and protect you from bad juju, bad vibes. And so I keep cellenite on my desk to keep it nice and clean energetically. But it's not the rock that's doing that, it's my mindset. So every time I look at that rock, I check my energy. And I'm thinking, how am I handling things? Am I protected in my bubble of energy? How's my vibe? It's not the rock that's doing it. It's the intention we put behind the stone that makes the magic happen for us because everything happens internally. Our thoughts create our lives and totally inform how we show up in the world. So the thing that I found out in researching some feng shui as it relates to multiple streams of income was the stove. The stove in your kitchen represents your resources, your career, and how you can nourish yourself to have the most success in the world. How beautiful is that? One of the things with the stove is they talk a lot about the position of your stove in your house, but I know most of us are not building a home right now.

Amber F. (50:00)
We're already living in one. So let's focus on what we can change. Number one, the amount of burners. So if at all possible, they say to avoid a small two-burner stove because in punctuae, more stove burners represent more opportunities and sources of wealth. This will translate to more prosperity and success in your career. So if you want to increase opportunities for wealth, you have to increase the number of burners. But more so than that, it says, and this is so me, stop using the same burner all of the time. I am that person. I'd like to know, here's a poll. What burner do you use? Because for me, it's bottom left. Every time I cook something bottom left, every time all these burners are the same size like flame. But I still use the bottom left one every single time I cook until I read this. Because what's happening for me is the talisman is every time I go to the stove to cook, I consider using a different burner because it says being mindful of the stove and rotating which burners you use will make it a point to encourage you to become more aware to help open your eyes to see more opportunities in your career and new sources of wealth.

Amber F. (51:07)
I love that. Again, the talisman, it's my responsibility to change my habitual patterns and make sure that I'm triggering myself with some reminder to think open-mindedly, to think about opportunities. So every time I go to cook and I go to that bottom-left burner, I think, Oh, my gosh, one of my intentions is to create more streams of revenue for myself. Let me just go to the bottom right, or let me just go to the top left. And that is my reminder. And then I always spend just a couple of seconds thinking about it and checking my energy and realigning with my goals in that moment. So rotating the burners that you use is meant to signify inviting more streams of revenue into your life. And if there's anything I can give as a little bit of magic, a little bit of a hack on how to do this, A, use different burners, B, start figuring out how you can add value with your new unique talents in this world to create revenue. That could be teaching courses, being a community facilitator, creating user-generated content, sharing the products that you love online, starting a YouTube channel, starting a podcast, investing, starting a business, a side hustle, anything like that.

Amber F. (52:20)
I'm going to leave you with a question, and this is for my girls out there that are interested in creating multiple streams of income. Are you trying this and feeling like you can't get something off the ground? Are you interested in starting something but you don't know what to do? How can I help you more? What are the things that you need to learn from me on how to be successful in creating multiple streams of income or what mindset or what realities we need to get and check so that you feel more confident in pursuing them? I'll be very honest with you. The podcast is more than a passion project. It's me creating another stream of income. It's creating another way for income to flow into my life. Money is currency. Currency is like a current in a stream. I have to be like water and be open for money to flow to me. And if I never started a podcast, I would never have created an opportunity for money to flow to me. Granted, is this podcast profitable? Not yet. I'm spending way more on editing and just admin and software every month and the startup cost and getting the equipment and things like that.

Amber F. (53:22)
It's going to be a while before this podcast is profitable. But the reality is most people don't even podcast past episode 21, let alone episode seven, most people fall off. And I'm playing the long game. That's the Warren Buffett in me. I'm going to be podcasting till I'm dead, you all. I'm in it to win it. I'm going to continue to do this forever. And I know that in time it will be profitable. It is a revenue stream. It is creating money for me. I am making money off of this podcast, but I'm not making more money than I'm spending. That will come in time. So I just want to encourage you to not give up to pursuing wealth and who you become in the process, who I've become in the process of doing this podcast is beyond any riches that I ever could have put in my bank account. I am a better person. I like myself more. I'm having more fun than I ever have. So it's about the process. It's about the journey. And I'm so honored to be on that journey with you. So like I said, let me know what it is you need help with in building your multiple streams of income in the next year.

Amber F. (54:19)
I'm so excited to take you through the end of the year really lit up. And I don't even want to say motivated, just aligned with really bringing your richest life to fruition in this new year. 2024 is our year, baby, girls. Let's do this. Love you so much. I'll see you on the next episode. Bye. Feeling rich? I hope so. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Old Money. If you have questions you want answered, email me at oldmoneypodcast@gmail. Com or hit us up on social. We are at Old Money Podcast and I am at your service. If this episode spoke to you, inspired you, helped you, if you took a single note, it would mean the world to me. If you please just take a minute to rate and review the podcast. And if you're not doing so already, subscribe. And if you have friends who like getting rich, please share this episode with them, even if it's just on your Instagram story. And I'd love you more than Jeff Bezos loves Amazon Prime. Thank you so much and I will talk to you on the next episode. Remember, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your tax professional, and I'm not your financial advisor.

Amber F. (55:21)
The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire, and support listeners and their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. In addition to that, this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services.

Resources

Manage your money with Monarch Money

Make a money plan with YNAB

Episode 003: Financial Fight or Flight is Ruining Your Life

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The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services for which individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to the episode.

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